Seven Days in Lumiose City
by Mothfinder General
Summary: A week is long enough for a man to go from unknown stranger to private obsession. Sycamore/Lysandre.
1. Monday

MONDAY EVENING

Dr Augustine Sycamore was going to the launch party of the new café with two of his research assistants, Harjeet and Jean-Baptiste. Harjeet was a raven-haired beauty with a prim smile and fiercely intelligent eyes, a specialist in Poison-type Pokémon; Jean-Baptiste was a cherub-faced, barrel-chested man with the bewildered expression of a shy child who hadn't worked out that he'd grown up to be rather attractive. Jean-Baptiste spent his days running metadata through the simulator and gazing yearningly at Harjeet; Harjeet spent her days working on an experimental Mega Evolution theorem and staring lustfully at Dr Sycamore.

Dr Sycamore spent his days alternately working on the Mega Evolution experiment and wondering whether he should get a haircut. But he was also a kind-hearted man, and he thought the launch party would be the perfect opportunity to play Cupid.

The Café Lysandre was a plush, rich affair with a highly select menu. All the food was organic and almost certainly seasonal. The wine was from small independent vineyards. The coffee was rich and dark as sin. And the café itself was stunningly beautiful.

"More thought went into the décor here than I've put into my bedroom in five years," Harjeet whispered in his ear.

"I cannot believe that a glorified snack joint could be more beautiful than the room that encloses you nightly, chérie," said Dr Sycamore, on Flirt Autopilot. He caught Harjeet's sparkling eyes and cursed inwardly. Jean-Baptiste, struggling out of his coat, looked depressed.

Exquisitely uniformed serving staff drifted past, carrying trays of drinks. Dr Sycamore rescued one as it came past.

"Aaaah, _Au_gus_tine_!" exclaimed a treacly voice somewhere behind the drinks tray.

The waiter drifted politely away, revealing the sardonic smile of a Glameow. Slightly behind the Glameow was Lumiose City's favourite lifestyle columnist, Vivenne Viper. "Darling, you look glorious!" she squealed.

Dr Sycamore airkissed politely. "I feel all the more glorious for seeing you, Vivienne."

"Oh _Gus_, just _stop_, you _cad_," Vivienne said. She was looking around the room as she spoke, already searching for her next target. Pokémon academics didn't sell papers, not even the pretty ones. "Listen darling, let me _introduce _you to the _owner_, he's simple _marvellous_, a real _eccentric_, you'd like him…"

Dr Sycamore allowed himself to be towed away, mouthing 'sorry' at his research assistants. Let them get on with it, he thought, if I stand there Harjeet will never notice how carefully Jean-Baptiste has ironed his shirt…

"Now _sweetheart_," Vivienne was saying to a tall man, "I'd like you to meet Dr Sycamore. He's on the tenure track at the École Paranormale Superieure, working on _Mega_ Evolution, he're sure to make _professor_ quite soon, you really _must _chat to him and I really _must_ circulate, excuse me darlings…"

Dr Sycamore caught the man's eye. He was hard to miss. He had a shock of red hair that put Dr Sycamore in mind of a rose in full bloom, or a volcano exploding, and icy blue eyes. He was flawlessly turned out, in what looked like extremely expensive clothes; for the first time that evening Dr Sycamore felt scruffy and underdressed. He looked like royalty. He was certainly not a small businessman.

"Excuse me," he said, smiling warmly up at the man. "Vivienne has, I think, introduced you as the café owner because you're the only person here as well-dressed as the café. You must excuse her, she's only interested in scandals and I entirely failed to arrive naked or with a gun."

"Au contraire," the man said drily, "she introduced me as the café owner because I am the café owner. My name is Lysandre."

"Oh, alors, my apologies…"

"Please do not apologise. I have heard a great deal about you, Dr Sycamore. I am an admirer of your work. Indeed, I was hoping to meet you. I believe the university has you up for recommendation as the newest professor of the faculty."

This little speech was delivered with a strange, cold gravity, but seemed perfectly genuine. Dr Sycamore gave the man his most self-effacing smile. "Ah, well, then this is a most fortuitous meeting…"

"I dabble in experimental evolutionary biology myself. I'm the head of the Fleur-de-Lis Labs. Perhaps you've heard of it?"

Dr Sycamore made a great show of being shocked. "Have I heard of it?! But my dear sir, is there anyone in Kalos who hasn't? How wonderful to meet the man at the wheel of such a brilliant and audacious venture! My goodness…! May I ask, given the scope and fame of your achievements in the scientific world, why on earth have you opened a café?"

The blue eyes went misty and translucent briefly, then hardened again. "Oh, I inherited some money, with the stipulation that I use it to 'follow my dream'."

"And you dream was to own a café?" asked Dr Sycamore incredulously.

"When I was a very young man, certainly," said Lysandre coolly. "Cooking for other people was one of my greatest pleasures. The money was from my late mother. We had not spoken in some time. She may have been unaware of my current work."

"Oh, I _am_ sorry," Dr Sycamore said, clapping one hand to his heart. "What a terrible loss. I am so glad you were able to make something beautiful of it."

At this, Lysandre's blue eyes wavered briefly again.

"Quite so," said Lysandre tersely. "Now please, Dr Sycamore, I'd like to talk a little about your work. But first, I expect we must circulate…"


	2. Tuesday

TUESDAY AFTERNOON

"You are hungover," Harjeet announced triumphantly.

"Your tones are dulcet," mumbled Dr Sycamore, "but my head is made of pain. Go away, my sweet child, go as far away as possible from me and don't come back until you've found coffee."

"Moron," said Harjeet affectionately, and flounced out.

"Did you know," Jean-Baptiste called across the office, "that last night you made a science date with a man who looks like his hair is frightened of him and is trying to escape?"

"What is a science date, you handsome young cretin?" demanded Dr Sycamore, raising his head from the desk.

"It's like a regular date, only there's no touching and no one has a good time. Actually, for me, that's sort of like a regular date."

Memories of the previous night name back to Dr Sycamore, in bilious waves. "Oh, mon dieu… was I… singing a song?"

"That was, ah, later," said Jean-Baptiste tactfully. "But before that, you claimed that the owner of Café Lysandre was also the head of Fleur-de-Lis Labs and you said you'd show him around our 'base' next Monday. You kept saying the word 'base' as well, without any context. I think you were working up to a dirty joke but then you fell forward into some canapés."

Dr Sycamore had a sudden awful recollection of those stern blue eyes. "Oh no, oh no," he moaned. "Oh Jean, kill me now, oh no…"

"Are you remembering the lyrics to the song?" Jean-Baptiste asked, grinning.

"No no, my friend, I am remembering that the owner of Café Lysandre really is the head of the Fleur-de-Lis Labs, and that I tried to teach him to tango…"

TUESDAY EVENING

Lysandre sat hunched over a laptop. His bedroom was as tastefully and sumptuously appointed as the rest of his lodgings, but the moon lantern that hung from the ceiling was switched off and did not illuminate the Modernist bedframe, the neo-Nouveau bedroom furniture, the thick pile carpet, the works of art on the wall. Only the laptop screen cast a sickly blueish light, and what it mainly lit was Lysandre. A stranger in the room would have seen his face, above a loose red dressing gown, contorted in quiet introspective agony, and the white column of his throat, the Adam's apple bouncing and twisting as he swallowed repeatedly.

He often did this, late into the night, scrolling through page after page of his search results. What he saw sickened him and left him feeling drained, but was also horribly addictive. No matter how disgusted he felt and how often he promised himself that he would stop, the internet always called him back, like a deformed siren.

An ex-lover had once caught him at it and thrown a fit. A fit, Lysandre remembered, and a rather valuable vase.

"I wouldn't have minded if it was just porn," she'd shouted, tears streaming down her face. "Why can't you be like any normal man and stay up and watch miserable strangers fucking each other? Why are you looking at _that_? All night! It's making you ill! You've barely slept! Are you insane?!"

"I don't know," he'd said, dislodging shards of ceramics from his collar. And he didn't. He just searched for things, found them, clicked on them, read them, felt awful, and searched again.

_Deforestation in Brazil: old wood rainforests cleared to make room for grazing, following a massive spike in red meat consumption. Concerns grow for local wildlife…_

Click.

_Two-mile wide 'island' of rubbish found in the middle of the Pacific Ocean…_

Click.

_Flash floods kill hundreds, render thousands more homeless. Our columnists debate whether global warming is behind the recent extreme weather…_

Click.

_War over mineral resources continue. Death count unknown. Dysentry widespread in refugee camps around the border. President insists, "We will send aid," but can the country afford it?_

Click.

_Shocking pictures from the frontline of a war. Some viewers may find these scenes upsetting…_

Click.

_Nuclear power station explosion. City devastated. Entire district will be 'uninhabitable' for thousands of years…_

Click.

Click.

Click.


	3. Wednesday

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON

Dr Sycamore didn't see Genevieve coming, and by the time he'd noticed her, she was already practically on top of him. Merde, he thought, as he toppled over backwards, she must have gone from standing to romantic sprinting in 0.2 seconds flat…

His head hit the floor with a thump that made his eyes water. Above him Genevieve swam out of focus, a sweet rose-scented apparition against the florescent lights.

"My little flower," he managed, and surreptitiously massaged his hip.

"Oh, Augustine, I just wanted to say congratulations! You are a brilliant man! I'm so very proud of you!"

Dr Sycamore smiled nervously. "Eh… oh, thank you… yes, I was quite pleased with the haircut myself…"

Genevieve laughed a laugh like a thousand twinkling bells on a cherry-blossom-lined path. "Oh, Gus, you're always so funny. But listen, I am serious, we must celebrate with a proper drink some time. It's been too long."

"Yes, wonderful, I love drinking," said Dr Sycamore helplessly. "Could you help me up, dear?"

Genevieve laughed again and leapt lithely to her feet. A dainty white hand with a surprisingly firm grip seized his collar and hauled him upright.

"There you are," she purred, dusting him off. He felt his stomach flutter momentarily, charmed despite himself. "Now don't forget, Gus, we must go for a drink! À bientôt!"

Before he could respond, she'd whisked herself past him and had strode off down the corridor, leaving nothing in her wake but the scent of her perfume and the swish of her golden-brown locks.

Bloody arts faculty, he thought, but with a smile on his face. They're so temperamental; it must be all the poetry they teach. Then he thought: I wonder what that was actually all about? Perhaps Harjeet has made a breakthrough on the theorem. It would be just like Genevieve to give me the credit for that girl's brilliant work, she never did like Harjeet, especially while we were still dating…

He continued through the building to his offices, still rubbing his hip.

When he opened the door to the main office, he was surprised to find it much more crowded than usual. Harjeet and Jean-Baptiste were sat on his desk side by side, grinning enormously. There were several other members of the evolutionary biology faculty there as well, and five or six Pokémon out of their Pokéballs, all wearing identical expressions of excitable delight. He paused in the doorway.

"My friends," he said, "my very dear friends… is this about my haircut?"

"Gus, you are simply unbelievable!" Professor Medior exclaimed, smacking his fist into his palm. His Hawlucha clapped its wings and chuckled.

"Hooray!" yelled Harjeet and Jean-Baptiste from the other end of the room.

"But what is it, Erwan?" asked Dr Sycamore, stepping forwards and spreading his arms. Professor Medior half-snorted, half-laughed and pulled at his moustache.

"Where have you been this morning, Gus?" asked Dr Partee, a small, plump, pretty woman who had once coquettishly slapped Dr Sycamore's arse so hard he wasn't able to sit down for half an hour.

"Hooray!" yelled Harjeet and Jean-Baptiste again. Dr Sycamore noticed, for the first time, that they were both holding empty champagne flutes and that they both looked a little flushed.

"What we mean is, have you visited the Great Board in the Quad this morning?" said Professor Fortmaine, the head of the department. "There was a very important announcement on it."

"Why, no, I – has something happened?"

"Hooray!"

"Shut up, you two," snapped Professor Medior. "Gus, you imbecile, we're here to celebrate."

Dr Sycamore ran his hands through his hair and looked at the assorted company shyly through his lashes. "Please, Erwan, don't torture me, I am entirely adrift… what are we celebrating?"

"Your promotion to Professor, you bloody fool!" thundered Professor Medior, and the whole room burst into hysterical applause.

"Hooray!" yelled Harjeet again, and toppled over backwards.

WEDNESDAY EVENING

Several hours later, the news hadn't ceased to be marvellous. Dr Sycamore – or Professor Sycamore, as he would officially be once the Dean had signed off on the new contract – had torn around the university buildings, cartwheeling and whooping, until someone's Flaaffy had come trotting after him with a glass of champagne balanced precariously on its back. Even then, it took ten minutes of coaxing and half a packet of toffees to prevent Dr Sycamore from climbing the walls out of sheer delight.

Half of the faculty in the evolutionary biology department gave up on getting any work done on that day, and any staff members that tried to teach very rapidly discovered that the students enrolled on the course had assumed that they were getting a half-day off. Jean-Baptiste – tipsy, loose-limbed, and alive with mischief – had wheedled a department expense card out of Professor Fortmaine and booked a big table at La Jolie Gardevoir, one of the nicer club-bars in Lumiose City. The party looked set to continue until the following morning.

At about eight o'clock, the celebrants tumbled out into the warm early evening air. Dr Sycamore had never seen the city so beautiful. Lumiose City had always been one of the architectural wonders of Kalos, but tonight it looked like the Platonic ideal of itself, softly aglow under the first of the sky's stars and the comforting haloes of the street lamps.

La Jolie Gardevoir was already fairly full. Dr Sycamore and his merry entourage followed Jean-Baptiste to the table. Jean-Baptiste was waving his arms and giving loud instructions about drinks and quantities (viz., WE WOULD LIKE SOME DRINKS, WE WOULD LIKE A LOT OF THEM) to the green chiffon-clad waitresses. Dr Sycamore felt someone tug at his coat and glanced down into Harjeet's sparkling, happy face.

"He's very good at this, isn't he?" she stage-whispered, nodding her head towards Jean-Baptiste.

"I've always thought he was a young man with a talent for taking charge, should the need arise," Dr Sycamore replied, and whooped internally when Harjeet giggled and blushed.

"Professor, you should get this," a graduate student was shouting across the table. He was jabbing at the cocktail menu and struggling to stay upright in his chair.

"What is it? What does it have in it? Does it matter?" Dr Sycamore shouted back.

"No! But it's got a rude name!" hollered the graduate student, then cackled hilariously and fell off his chair. Dr Sycamore caught the menu just as he went down.

"I'm ordering cocktails, who wants one?" he called across the rowdy table. He wasn't a particularly loud man and his voice was lost in the hubbub. Someone – he suspected Dr Partee – heard enough to crack a joke about cocks and tails but everyone else responded with the cheerful standard of: "Woo! Woo hoo!"

"I love you all! I'm going to the bar!" he said. This got more cheers, so he bowed and squeezed himself past chairs and colleagues. A new waitress was bringing several carafes of wine and multiple glasses. She moved with a subdued grace and, on closer inspection, did not actually seem to be touching the floor. She was an actual Gardevoir, Dr Sycamore noted with surprise. She gave him a cryptic but kindly smile as he tripped past.

There was a bit of a crush at the bar, although most people were elegantly propping it up rather than ordering drinks. Dr Sycamore, still feeling reckless and invincible, dived for a gap between bodies and hit his chin against the edge of the counter.

"Ah, Dr Sycamore," said a voice above him. "Or should I say, Professor Sycamore?"

Dr Sycamore straightened up, rubbing his chin. For two seconds he stared in confusion at the glinting, inscrutable eyes above him, then he started so badly that he trod on the foot of the person behind him.

"Oh, pardon monsieur, I'm sorry, my goodness," he muttered, then squinted up into Lysandre's face again. "Bon soir, Lysandre, how nice to see you."

"Bon soir, Professor," said Lysandre gravely, "and félicitations, I believe." He leaned down to kiss Dr Sycamore on both cheeks in typical Kalos fashion, one hand resting heavily on the startled academic's shoulder.

"Merci, it has been a wonderful day, to be sure," Dr Sycamore managed to stammer out. The kisses were slow and deliberate, and as Lysandre drew back, unsteadily rasping his beard against Dr Sycamore's cheekbone, he realised that Lysandre was moving with such languor and intensity because he was quite drunk. He was drinking red wine and his lips were stained purple, the darker patches showing up where they had been bitten. It was an incongruous sign of vulnerability and the sight of it sent a nervous tremor through Dr Sycamore's body, though he couldn't say why.

"I only heard the news an hour or so ago," Lysandre continued. "My good friends at the university were taking bets on your promotion, and I am happy to report that none of them were very willing to bet that you would be passed over on this occasion."

"In the end, we had to take bets on when the news would arrive and where you would go to celebrate," said a voice in Dr Sycamore's ear. "We never had any doubt that you would be promoted."

Dr Sycamore half-turned and saw the head of the Pokéball engineering department, whose foot he had so clumsily crushed. Behind him, Dr Sycamore recognised several very senior and important members of the university board, all of whom were nodding like Psyducks trying to shake migraines.

"I am very flattered," he said, his nerves fighting a losing battle with his desire to flirt with the company at large. "I hope, then, that you will join myself and my colleagues in a celebratory drink? And I wouldn't dream of letting you spend your winnings on another bottle – you must talk to my research assistant Jean-Baptiste, who is organising a bacchanal over there."

Someone at the back – was it the Junior Dean? Good God – made a noise that sounded suspiciously like, "Woo hoo!"

"But you must let me buy you a drink, Professor," said Lysandre. He spoke softly but had no difficulty in making himself heard above the jubilant background noise. "What is a victory if you are not treated to the spoils?"

Dr Sycamore felt himself beginning to blush. Lysandre, when he was drunk, seemed to speak at a level between an admonishment and a caress, and it was oddly affecting.

"That's very kind of you," he said anxiously, "and please, call me Gus. Everyone else does."

"As you wish, Professor," said Lysandre, and Dr Sycamore caught the ghost of a smile flitting across his lips. "What's your poison? Were you after one of the specialities of the house?"

"Ah yes, one of my students recommended…" Dr Sycamore ran his eye over the cocktail list and saw, with rising horror, which cocktail had been forced on him, "…ah, the Slippery Nipple?"

Lysandre's face betrayed absolutely nothing. "A Slippery Nipple? Bon, I was expecting cherry bellinis, but why not? Perhaps it is the sort of drink that one can grow to enjoy. It is only early on in our acquaintance, Augustine, and yet I feel that you are the sort of man who will never cease to surprise," he said, and turned towards the bar to order.

At least, thought Dr Sycamore wretchedly, he didn't call me 'Professor' this time, I think I would have died on the spot.

WEDNESDAY EVENING – LONG PAST BEDTIME

Dr Sycamore had no idea what time it was but he had lots of friends and lots of drinks and he certainly wasn't afraid of the police right now. About an hour ago, some brave soul had shyly made their way to the dancefloor, sparking a revolution, and now the whole of La Jolie Gardevoir looked like a shambolic song-and-dance number from a camp musical.

"I have to get some air!" he shouted at no one in particular.

"Woo hoo!" said half of the dancefloor. Dr Sycamore staggered to the door.

The cool evening air was like tonic water for his senses. He gasped and leaned against the outside wall. Inside, he could hear more whooping and the jolly sound of glass breaking.

"Alors, Professor," said a dreadfully familiar voice, "was it one Slippery Nipple too many?"

Dr Sycamore didn't look round. He could hear the dignified amusement in the man's voice. "No, I think it was the Sex on the Beach that finished me off, although I believe all that wine gave it an unfair head start."

He heard Lysandre laugh shortly and turned to face him. "Et toi, Lysandre, how are you feeling? I've never seen a man take on a merlot with such determination."

Lysandre smiled faintly. He was wearing a beautifully cut coat and smoking a thin black cigarette, and looked as if he should be on a poster.

"I wasn't joking when I said that no one was willing to bet you wouldn't be promoted, you know," he said, apropos of nothing.

"Yes, thank you, I am most flattered," murmured Dr Sycamore automatically.

Lysandre took a deep drag on the cigarette and blew a series of smoke rings, in the manner of a man with something on his mind. He still looked rather drunk, although sufficiently sober enough to regret it. As he watched the smoke rings drift and dissipate, he said carefully, "Of course, there was considerable debate over why you were up for promotion so soon – I understand you are one of the youngest men to ever make professor."

Dr Sycamore breathed out. He hadn't realised until that moment that he had been holding his breath. "And who did they say I had to fuck to get the position?" he asked, as lightly as he could, but his voice was trembling.

Lysandre had the grace to look a little embarrassed. He frowned down at the cigarette. "Nothing like that, Professor… After all, Professor Fortmaine is the head of your department, and from what I understand, she is incorruptible. No, some of my contacts at the university suggested that you were vampirizing the work of your willing female colleagues."

Dr Sycamore flushed. "Well, I am glad that you speak your mind, sir," he said angrily. "It is true that my success owes a great deal to the support, patience and generosity of my colleagues, both female _and_ male, but I would rescind the promotion in a moment," here he snapped his fingers, "a _moment_, if I thought that I was riding someone else's coattails."

Lysandre's face was perfectly impassive. "I quite understand. Beauty is its own reward, but also its own punishment, alas."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Dr Sycamore shouted, then subsided abruptly. His voice had echoed back across the street, and in the stillness that followed, he felt loutish and ridiculous. He leaned back against the wall again and put his head in his hands.

"Please, forgive me," he whispered, mortified. "I am not myself. I have had too much to drink."

He kept his eyes shut and counted three heartbeats. The night, previously so cool and pleasant, now felt chilly.

"No, you must forgive me," said Lysandre, gently. "I should not have indulged in such idle and malicious gossip. I only meant to suggest that certain members of the university board are envious of you, less for your academic ability and more for your – because of your – because you are exceptionally attractive."

Dr Sycamore opened his eyes. Lysandre had soundlessly moved closer and was now standing only an arm's length away from him. His eyes had softened and had lost their icy aspect, and his hauteur was tempered by the expression on his face, kindly but also faintly sad. Stood this close to him, Dr Sycamore could see the bitten patches on his mouth again, and caught himself wondering how they were bitten – absentmindedly, in bitterness, in anxiety or in pleasure?

"We have both been foolish," he said, and managed a shaky smile.

They stared at each other for a few seconds, then Lysandre said, "Would you like a cigarette?"

Dr Sycamore laughed. "I'd love one. Thank you."

Lysandre reached into an inside pocket and drew out a plain, handsome gold cigarette box with a single engraving of a fleur-de-lis on the front. He flicked it open and offered Dr Sycamore one of the thin black cigarettes. On closer inspection, the black cigarette paper was speckled with tiny gold stars.

"I have them made for me," Lysandre said, as Dr Sycamore extracted one.

Mon dieu, though Dr Sycamore, he has them made for him. He stuck the cigarette in his mouth and patted down his front.

"Oh bother," he muttered. "Lysandre, can I trouble you for a light?"

Lysandre pursed his lips. "Actually, you cannot. I have misplaced mine. I lit my cigarette on a Charmander." He must have noticed Dr Sycamore's shocked expression, because he added, "Someone's pet, passing by, they kindly offered. Wait, I have an idea."

He lifted his cigarette to his lips (his bitten lips, thought Dr Sycamore, unable to stop himself staring) and took several quick, hard drags on it. The tip glowed amber. Lysandre indicated it with a flick of his eyes.

"Ah," said Dr Sycamore. He stood on his toes to touch the tip of his cigarette to Lysandre's. They were close enough for Dr Sycamore to see the marble-white smoothness of Lysandre's forehead and the bruised shadows under his eyes. Beneath the sweet fragrance of first grade tobacco, he thought he caught the scent of the man's skin: a clean but musky fragrance that put him in mind of a big cat. He met the cold blue eyes and saw them watchful, thoughtful. He felt strange and pulled back quickly.

"Bad luck, it didn't work," said Lysandre, glancing at the unlit cigarette. "Here, let's try again, and you must suck this time, Augustine."

Dr Sycamore felt his throat go dry at that and tried to croak a response. He was feeling drunker by the second, although on something other than alcohol. It must be secondhand nicotine, he thought helplessly.

He stood on his toes again, this time resting a hand on Lysandre's arm to steady himself. Under his palm, he felt a muscle tense and thought deliriously, oh yes, so very much like a big cat, a big cat about to spring. He felt weak and stupid; his knee knocked against Lysandre's thigh.

Lysandre's cigarette had burned down and his mouth was perilously close to the glowing tip. Dr Sycamore pulled hard on his own cigarette and took in the handsome face anew (because he was, after all, a handsome man, if a strange one, Dr Sycamore realised, and there was no shame in noticing it, he was a very handsome man). When he felt the first cloud of smoke in his mouth, he practically threw himself backwards and took a deep, cathartic lungful.

"Ciel!" exclaimed Lysandre, unsmiling but amused, as Dr Sycmore started coughing frantically. "You must have been dying for a smoke."

You have no idea, thought Dr Sycamore.

It took several more chokes and puffs before he was able to settle back and enjoy the cigarette properly. Lysandre held the stub end of his between his gloved fingers, apparently unwilling to grind it out. The caught each other's eyes again.

"You know," said Dr Sycamore finally, "as a post-doctoral student, I had this very same problem."

"You never had a light?"

"No," Dr Sycamore smiled, "I was referring to all that stuff about vampirizing my willing female colleagues, et cetera."

Lysandre frowned and threw the stub of his cigarette on the ground. "I wish you would forget that I ever brought it up," he said flatly, grinding the stub under the toe of his boot.

"No, I'm sorry, I mean – what I wanted to say was, I reacted so badly because for many years, I thought it was true." He waited for a reaction, and when he saw Lysandre was watching him expressionlessly, plunged on. "I was very fortunate, when I first came to the university, to be working with the old head of the department, Professor Axe –"

"Professor Margaux Hortense des Aix? I have heard about her, a very formidable old woman."

"Yes, well, I expect that's why she used 'Axe' as a professional name. Although I must say, I never thought of her as an 'old woman'," Dr Sycamore said, reproachfully. "But I worked under her in the early days of the Mega Evolution experiments. You could say she was my mentor – in fact, this is how I think of her. And I was in awe of her. She has a very strong personality – she always pushed me and challenged me. But I also saw how difficult other people found her. She could be, eh, prickly."

"Yes," said Lysandre. Dr Sycamore looked at him in surprise. "Oh, excuse me, I was just thinking aloud. Please continue."

"Well, as I say, people found her difficult. So when my work started to get recognition, I assumed it was because I was the acceptable face of Mega Evolution, you know, the nice smile, the floppy friendly puppy. For years I thought that Professor Axe merely tolerated it, that the truly exceptional work was hers. But a year or so ago, when I first cracked the primary coding, she sent me a letter. It just said, 'I have nothing more to teach you. Perhaps I never did.' It was blunt but… reassuring. She showed me that I have my own worth."

Dr Sycamore sighed and stopped. "I'm sorry, I feel as if I have been pouring words in your ear all evening."

Lysandre rested his hand on Dr Sycamore's shoulder. "I enjoy listening to you talk," he said simply.

Dr Sycamore looked up at the sky and counted stars between the scraps of cloud. In fact he did not count any further than three, when he realised that Lysandre's hand was still on his shoulder. His mind went blank.

Neither man moved a muscle. Dr Sycamore felt as if the skin underneath his jacket and shirt were aflame where Lysandre was resting his hand. He could feel Lysandre's eyes on his face like a searchlight. The fingers holding his cigarette were shaking; he felt too exposed to take a drag and let it dangle by his side.

He felt the very tips of Lysandre's fingers graze his collar and barely suppressed a gasp.

"My dear friend," he managed to choke out, at the same time as Lysandre said,

"Professor."

Dr Sycamore did not dare face him. Lysandre moved a little close, until there was only a fistful of air separating their bodies. "Augustine," he said, softly.

"Yes?" Dr Sycamore said faintly.

"You have been honest with me. I feel that I should return the favour. There are some things that you should know about me."

"I am– I am happy to– anything you wish to share, I will gladly keep," babbled Dr Sycamore. Oh God, I only wanted some fresh air, he was thinking, how did I get into this situation?

Lysandre sighed hugely. "I am drunk," he said, more or less to himself. "I would not do this if I were not drunk." He squeezed Dr Sycamore's shoulder for emphasis, then said, "The Fleur-de-Lis Labs… we're working on a new machine. The Holo Caster. It was intended as a useful tool, but as with all new developments, I can see how it might be put to use as a– "

At this moment, the door of La Jolie Gardevoir banged open and a couple of graduate students fell out into the night air. They were grappling and kissing and looked like a couple of mating dragonflies, if dragonflies hiccupped.

Lysandre was already several feet away, as inscrutable as ever. He raised an eyebrow at Dr Sycamore.

"Putain! If she has stopped breathing, this resuscitation technique will not help her!" shouted Dr Sycamore, steaming with relief. "Alors, you must lie her down in a safe space before you attempt mouth-to-mouth!"

The two students disentangled themselves. The young man looked a little sheepish but the girl was giggling happily.

"Oh Dr Sycamore!" she squeaked.

"Professor!" hissed her beau.

"Oh, _Professor_ Sycamore," the girl fluted, "we didn't see you there!"

"That much is obvious, my little chicken," said Dr Sycamore. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lysandre slip back into La Jolie Gardevoir and though, That is the last I will see of him this evening. No doubt he knows a secret exit. A man like that always has an escape plan.


	4. Thursday

THURSDAY MORNING

It was 7am. The morning sun forced bars of light through the curtains in Lysandre's room, striping his rumpled covers. Beneath them, he tossed and turned in the shallows of sleep. His breathing was uneven. He was having a nightmare.

In the nightmare, he was in the secret chambers of the Fleur-de-Lis labs. He wore a lab coat over his immaculate clothes. His hands rested on the dashboard dials of the prototype Holo Caster – which, unlike its real world equivalent, seemed to be functioning perfectly. The lab was filled with the susurration of machinery. The dream-Lysandre was relaxed, assured, in control. Nevertheless, the whole room had the hysterical, near-violent quality of a nightmare. Just below the surface, something morbid and awful was waiting.

To the left of the dashboard was a huge glass box. There was something in the box. The dream-Lysandre knew what it was, but Lysandre groaned in his sleep, desperate to look inside but dreading what he would see.

"What do you think of my Holo Caster, Professor?" asked the dream-Lysandre.

"Extraordinary," said a voice in a falsely mild tone. Lysandre and dream-Lysandre could both hear the shakiness in the Professor's voice.

"It will make the lives of Pokémon trainers richer and more convenient," continued dream-Lysandre, flicking a switch. The glass box was flooded with light, but still the dream-Lysandre did not turn to face it.

"A remarkable achievement," said the voice, which was coming from the direction of the glass box.

"But I believe it has other uses," said dream-Lysandre, stepping back. "I believe it is the ultimate weapon of espionage. And it will be so successful because so many people will use it willingly. Do you understand that, Professor? People will _choose_ to feed their personal information into the Holo Caster."

He had turned to walk towards the glass box now. In the corner, pale and forlorn, a human figure was curled up against the side. It was naked. The harsh light of the box lit smooth olive skin, dusted here and there by fine dark hairs. Its face was obscured by soft, curling locks of blue-black hair. Dream-Lysandre gazed down at the prone figure hungrily.

"Look me in the eye, Professor."

Don't look me in the eye, thought Lysandre. Don't do it. I know this is a dream, I want to wake up now.

Augustine Sycamore lifted his head.

His eyes were hooded and pinched, either against the light or in pain, half-hidden by his rumpled hair (and Lysandre felt dream-Lysandre's fingers twitch, longing to drag his fingers through it). His sensitive mouth – the traitor of his face, unable to hide his true emotions no matter how suave or relaxed he attempted to appear – trembled deliciously. And though he kept himself curled up, protecting his modesty, his smooth back, his legs, his arms, the delicate cage of his ribs, were on view, every inch of skin an agonising temptation. He was a flower, a bird, a hallucination of beauty.

"You are a flower, a bird, a hallucination of beauty," said dream-Lysandre.

"You're too kind," said Dr Sycamore sadly. "Please, will you let me out?"

"Not when it's taken me so long to catch you, mon ami," said dream-Lysandre humorously, but Lysandre could feel his acrid sting of arousal.

"What do you want?" asked Dr Sycamore.

And dream-Lysandre started to answer but his voice became a set of echos and buzzes, because Lysandre really wasn't sure what he wanted, other than to touch (and maybe bruise) that perfect skin.

He woke up.

Outside, something was cheeping obnoxiously. The day was fresh and innocent and it hurt him.

Lysandre lay on his back, staring up at the canopy of his bed. His sheets were lying diagonally across his body, a sure sign that he'd been tossing and turning for hours. His stomach felt hot and foul and his throat was parched.

I will never drink again, he thought solemnly. I am very hungover.

He'd had the foresight to leave himself a glass of water on the bedside table the night before, and he raised himself up on one elbow now to drink from it.

I am hungover, he thought, and that is all that is the matter with me.

He ignored the luxurious ache between his legs and forced himself to think about the things that needed to be done that day. My labs won't run themselves, he thought, and neither will the café.

He often consciously thought like this, in stern particulars like a teacher lecturing a child, to drown out the sounds of his actual thoughts, which were anarchic. Sometimes both sets of thoughts wondered whether he was quite well, and whether it might be worth looking into psychotherapy. Sometimes he idly looked up 'schizophrenia' in the dictionary and then slammed it shut before he'd read the whole entry.

Yet, despite the tried and tested method of stamping down his subconscious, scenes from La Jolie Gardevoir kept replaying themselves. Dr Sycamore laughing with some colleagues. Dr Sycamore doing shots and dropping most of the drink down his front. Dr Sycamore cooing over someone's Pichu and tickling its tummy. Dr Sycamore busting some moves on the dancefloor. Dr Sycamore flirting outrageously. Dr Sycamore giving whispered, conspiratorial advice to one of his research assistants. Dr Sycamore momentarily distracted by a thought, his face suddenly quiet and introspective, alone despite the crowd surrounding him.

Lysandre had been watching him, on and off, all evening, although after he'd bought Dr Sycamore a drink the academic had wandered off, apparently dismissing Lysandre from his mind. After a few hours the sight of him, shining like a diamond in a bucket of coal, was so discombobulating that Lysandre decided to step outside for some air and a smoke. He needed to get away.

Of course he would have chosen that moment to take the night air, thought Lysandre. It is important to always be prepared.

Inattentively, he let his hand drift down his stomach and his knuckled brushed against the head of his cock. A bolt of desire ran through him and he pulled his hand away as if he'd been stung.

The Holo Caster, he thought firmly, but unbidden rose the sub-thought, _he was startled by me too_. _Remember the look on his face?_

And before he could stop it, the memory of his hand on Dr Sycamore's shoulder surfaced from where he had grimly buried it. Dr Sycamore's lips had been trembling, just like they had in the dream, though he'd kept his face turned away. Through his jacket Lysandre had felt the knobs of his bony shoulder and the sensation had put him in mind of holding a captive bird in his hands. And – the most potent image of all – he'd seen Dr Sycamore's pulse in his throat, fluttering rapidly. He'd lain his fingertips on the man's collar, yearning for that sweetly defenceless flicker against his touch, but couldn't summon up the courage to do it.

You've only just met him, and hardly even that, he reminded himself, squeezing his eyes shut. He's just a man with similar research interests. He doesn't even know you. He doesn't _want_ to know you. He's as pretty and self-centred as a Persian.

But he saw again in his mind's eye that nervous, racing heartbeat in Dr Sycamore's throat. He felt like a puppet, moved by external forces, without agency; he let his hand drop again and closed his fist deliberately around his cock. It bucked in his hand and he bit down hard on his lower lip.

I need to get this over and done with or I'll never be able to get up and start working. It's just a physical need that requires attention, he thought, while treacherously, the untamed thoughts beneath them said, _you want to think about it, you want to, you want to imagine it, you like it_…

Dr Sycamore's throat bare and exposed… the buttons on his shirt undone, revealing the lovely hollow between his collarbones, the dusting of black hair on his chest… his pulse under Lysandre's lips, his gasps… Lysandre's tongue tracing the letters of his name against that soft, secret patch of skin, _A, U, G, U, S, T, I, N, E…_

THURSDAY AFTERNOON

There was a note in Dr Sycamore's pigeonhole. It was rolled in a tube and sealed with a wax seal that bore the symbol of a rearing Noivern, its head thrown back.

Dr Sycamore grinned. All the other letters in the pigeonhole were standard-issue envelopes. Besides, there was only one person he knew who had a Noivern signet ring (and a pet Noivern).

He broke the seal and unrolled the tube. The inner leaf fluttered out. Dr Sycamore caught it and read, in heavy Gothic script,

_SEE ME_

and, close to the bottom, in much smaller letters

_for lunch._

He strolled into the office. "Harjeet, Jean-Baptiste, I'm going to be out for lunch."

Neither of the research assistants looked up from their work. From what Dr Sycamore understood, neither had made it home from La Jolie Gardevoir before 3am and both looked as if they regretted every drink they'd had. Dr Sycamore had switched to lemonade after his cigarette break with Lysandre and now felt fresh and smug.

"I'll be at the Café Deux Mousquets, if anyone wants me," he said, beaming at them.

"Please sir," rasped Jean-Baptiste "please please go away."

Dr Sycamore blew them a kiss and skipped out.

Café Deux Mosquets was a very popular lunch spot, owing to the two course prix fixe menu, which was always delicious and cheap, but Professor Axe was a regular and if she said 'see me for lunch', she meant 'see me at Café Deux Mosquets'. Besides, no café owner who wanted to stay in business, or alive, would fail to give Professor Axe a table if she asked for one. She was sat in a window booth, immediately recognisable by her chaotic grey chignon and her extraordinarily big hooked nose. She barely glanced up when Dr Sycamore arrived.

"I got your note, madame," he said, leaning forward to kiss her on both cheeks. "I hope you're very well. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Professor Axe suffered the kisses without attempting to respond to them. "Sit down, Gus," she said briskly, "and stopped flimmering about like a Butterfree on a sugar high."

Professor Sycamore slid into the seat opposite her and gave her his nicest and most attentive smile. She glared at him. "Congratulations, by the way," she added, and treated him to a quick, evil grin. Coming from Professor Axe, this was a effusive endorsement.

"Oh, thank you! Yes, we were out last night celebrating, we had quite the evening," said Dr Sycamore, calling over a waitress with a flick of his wrist. He didn't need to read the menu – Deux Mousquet's Thursday menu hadn't changed in almost a decade.

"So I understand," said Professor Axe drily. "The Emeritus Professor of Psychic Physics was at La Jolie Gardevoir last night. He mentioned that he saw you trying to breakdance and kicking a faculty member in the face."

Dr Sycamore made a little moue of dismissal, although privately he was horrified.

"What can I get for you, sir?" asked the waitress, who had arrived just in time to hear the end of this conversation and was looking at Dr Sycamore with the melting expression of a woman who has just met her first kung fu hero.

"I'll take the vichyssoise to begin with, then the whitebait and new potatoes with whatever greens you think a terrible man like me deserves," he said, absentmindedly switching on the charm. The waitress blushed.

"I'll also have the vichyssoise, and the coq au vin jaune," said Professor Axe. "And we'll have a bottle of Saint Chinian Blanc."

"Oh, I'm not sure – after last night, I think I should –"

"I am an old woman," said Professor Axe sharply, "and I want a drink. Thank you, girl," she said to the waitress, who all but curtsied and ran for it.

"As I was saying," said Professor Axe, leaning forward, "the EP of PP saw you last night. He says he managed to get a couple of drinks on your tab. I'm surprised at young Agathe Fortmaine, letting a research assistant get hold of an expense card. It wouldn't have happened in my day."

She grinned again, with only one side of her mouth. Dr Sycamore, who knew perfectly well that this sort of thing happened all the time under Professor Axe, and whose brain balked at the description of the severe Professor Fortmaine as 'young', wisely kept quiet.

"He was there with a different party," said Professor Axe. "Name of Lysandre." She watched him steadily. "I see you know him."

The waitress returned with the bottle of wine and two glasses. She poured a finger's width for Professor Axe with a shaky hand, and audibly breathed a sigh of relief when the professor nodded her head. Dr Sycamore let her fill the two glasses and leave before he said, "And what makes you think I know him?"

"The way you reacted."

"Madame, I did not react."

"Exactly." Professor Axe drained her glass and refilled it neatly. "You _always_ have _some_ fluffy exclamation up your sleeve, Gus. He must have had quite an effect on you."

Dr Sycamore swallowed a mouthful of the excellent wine. "Do you know him?" he said, more to avoid responding to the observation than anything else.

"I knew his parents. His mother went to a university overseas – she was an appalling student but a raving beauty. His father was at the École Paranormale Superieure at the same time as me. A fairly talented man, astonishingly disciplined. Lazare du Feu, you may recognise the name."

Dr Sycamore blanched. "The Comte de la Masséna du Feu-Calincourt?"

"Oh yes, I thought you might," said Professor Axe sardonically.

The waitress brought the soup, which they ate in silence. Dr Sycamore was thinking frantically. Professor Axe talked blandly over his silence, displaying her little-used tact.

As they neared the end of the first course, he said, "Lysandre did not mention that he was an aristocrat. If I had known he was a son of the Château du Feu…"

"People have all sorts of reasons for obscuring the details of their birth," observed Margaux des Aix coldly. Dr Sycamore reddened and mumbled an apology. The Château des Aix had effectively disowned Professor Axe several decades ago – she was too outspoken, too polemical and too angry about what she saw as the corruption of the old order.

"He mentioned that he opened the Café Lysandre using some money he'd inherited from his mother…" he said, changing the subject.

Professor Axe's mouth twisted. "The du Feus are a very old-fashioned family," she said. "His mother, Célestine, would have handed over the purse strings to Lazare upon their marriage. His inheritance from his mother would have been quite small, comparatively."

"And the Comte?"

"Still alive," said Professor Axe, "unfortunately. The hate is keeping him alive, I think."

"What does he hate?"

"Oh, everything."

The waitress returned to clear the soup bowls. She attempted to catch Dr Sycamore's eye but his Flirt Autopilot was switched off. Professor Axe, over the years, had let slip a few details about life in upper classes, and from what he understood, wealth came at the price of immense suppression. He was thinking unhappily about the young Lysandre, who had loved to cook, and the mother who had loved him for it, and turning over the knowledge that the two of them hadn't spoken for several years before her death.

"He is an only child, and upon Lazare's death he will become the Comte de la Masséna du Feu-Calincourt," said Professor Axe. "At the moment he is just Lysandre du Feu. His father gives him an allowance, of course, which is how the Fleur-de-Lis Labs came into being."

Dr Sycamore nodded and drank more wine.

"He's worried you, Gus," said Professor Axe. "I knew he would. That's why I wanted to talk to you."

"Madame, I don't know what you're insinuating," said Dr Sycamore, but it came out tremulous.

"I'm not insinuating anything," snapped Professor Axe, her eyes blazing. "If you could shut up for a moment, boy, I'll tell you what I came here to say."

The waitress arrived with the second course. Dr Sycamore put a piece of whitebait in his mouth but barely tasted it.

"The Fleur-de-Lis Labs," said Professor Axe carefully, "specialise in evolutionary biology, though they have several side projects in the communications industry. That's not important; what you need to know is that Lysandre's research interests closely mirror your own, and he will stop at nothing to take advantage of you and your famous soft-heartedness. By which I mean your generosity and willingness to share, of course."

"I will be on my guard," said Dr Sycamore, who was thinking, vampirizing the work of my colleagues, eh? Ha!

"That is not all." Professor Axe chewed for a few moments, marshalling her thoughts. Finally she said, "What do you think of him, Gus?"

"I barely know him, madame."

"And what do you think of him? Don't obfuscate, it annoys me."

Dr Sycamore chased a new potato from one end of the plate to the other. He sighed. "He seems… sad."

Professor Axe frowned. "We always seem sad to you, Gus. Always. You can't save every lonely soul you meet."

She scrutinized him for a little longer. He felt the twin drills of her eyes boring into him. Never attempt to hide anything from this woman, he reminded himself, she knows you inside out. You, and everyone else.

"How would you feel," said Professor Axe, "if I told you he was routinely whipped as a child? At school, mostly, but also by his father."

Dr Sycamore flushed and banged the edge of his hand against the table. "Margaux, how do you think I would feel? That's barbaric!"

"Oh no, it's quite normal in the upper classes," said Professor Axe. "Lysandre was a wilful boy, I seem to remember. And Lazare, as I say, was a man who prized discipline above all things. Remember, this man is richer than you will ever be."

Dr Sycamore spluttered. "That is beside the point." He'd felt the sting of angry tears as he imagined the child Lysandre being beaten. Dr Sycamore had come from a very large and very happy family, with two sisters and a brother, and was almost congenitally incapable of imagining a miserable and lonely childhood except in exaggerated set pieces. As Professor Axe had once remarked, his family was not only remarkable in that they all loved and cherished one another, as standard, but they all rather liked each other as well.

"You'd like to save him, wouldn't you?" said Professor Axe wearily. "You see the sad little boy inside the big, handsome brute of a man and you want to stroke his head until he turns into a kitten. I'm being crude, of course, but that's the long and short of it. He'll probably be expecting it, Gus. He's a very intelligent, sophisticated man, and remarkably manipulative. Fleur-de-Lis Labs' research rivals that of the university. You don't think he poached all the best researchers and engineers through being nice, do you?"

"I can only repeat, madame, that I hardly know him," said Dr Sycamore. "I appreciate the warning, but I think it's come a little prematurely."

"I don't think so," said Professor Axe flatly. "Watch out for him, Gus. Don't let your guard down for a moment."

Dr Sycamore nodded vaguely, but he was distracted again. Somewhere in the depths of his mind, the mental image of little Lysandre being whipped had mutated monstrously into the adult Lysandre being whipped, which was an altogether different prospect. The mental image had a cruel voluptuousness, almost a sensuality, that made Dr Sycamore's eyes momentarily swim out of focus. He couldn't quite focus on the image but his mind conjured the long arch of the broad creamy back, that bobbing shock of red hair and the cries and moans. When he blinked and his vision cleared, he saw that Professor Axe was regarding him over the top of her wine glass.

"Alea jacta est," she said tiredly. They bent their heads to finish their meal.


	5. Friday

FRIDAY MORNING

Dr Sycamore woke up an hour before his alarm clock was due to go off. He went from deep unconsciousness to wide awake with no intervening stage, and immediately felt like the world had punched him in the face.

A few seconds more and he realised that, although the world had refrained from violating him while he lay sleeping, his body had had other ideas.

"Merde, merde, merde," he muttered, kicking off the sheets, which were filthy now anyway. The cradle of his crotch was sticky and matted; a line even lay along his stomach. Dr Sycamore had woken up at the denouement of a wet dream.

"Fils de pute," he grumbled, ineffectually dabbing at the mess with the heel of his hand. "What am I, fourteen? Where are the tissues?"

He got awkwardly out of bed, clasping himself. "This is so embarrassing," he said aloud to the empty bedroom, and hobbled into the en suite bathroom.

Vigorously scrubbing at himself under a hot shower, he wondered why his body had chosen to act like an excitable adolescent. Nothing in the previous day had moved him unduly. After his bizarre lunch with Professor Axe, he'd gone back to the university and worked in the labs with Jean-Baptiste while Harjeet had bicycled out to the Pokémon hospital at the other end of town, to check on the progress of an injured Garchomp. (Jean-Baptiste had shyly admitted that he was taking Harjeet to a house party the following night, and Dr Sycamore had seized the happy boy by the shoulders and kissed him on both cheeks. "Quelle Casanova!" he'd exclaimed, while Jean-Baptiste had blushed and insisted that they were just going 'as friends', which was the weirdest protestation Dr Sycamore had ever heard, as if they hadn't been friends to begin with.)

At the end of the day he'd gone for a quick coffee with an old friend of his in the environmental biology department, whom he was meeting on Saturday night for a concert. He'd taken some books back to the library, flirted with the librarian, gone home, cooked and eaten some noodles, played with his Fletchinder, read a couple of chapters of a newly published dissertation, and decided to get an early night.

And yet, as he absentmindedly wrote his name in steam on the glass door of the shower (scrubbing out 'Dr' for 'Professor' when he remembered), he felt a little tainted by something, something buried and private.

_How would you feel_, said Professor Axe's clipped voice in his head, _if I told you he had been routinely whipped as a child?_

Dr Sycamore shivered, groped for the shampoo.

_How would you feel if I told you he'd been whipped?_

He was running low on shampoo. He squeezed the bottle and it made the disappointed spluttering noise of near-empty shampoo bottles everywhere.

The voice echoed and faded, falling into its component sub-clauses.

_How would you feel… whipped… if he… how would you feel…_

He shook the shampoo bottle hard and was rewarded with a pearly glob of something lemony-smelling. He worked it into his wet hair, humming to himself.

_How would it feel to be whipped?_

Dr Sycamore took a sharp breath in through his nostrils and dug his nails into his scalp. Strange pictures were flashing through his mind's eye, like the afterimages of a flame.

Whips and curved backs, the colours red and black, control and surrender, exquisite cruelty, exquisite pain.

Dr Sycamore ground the heel of his hands into his eyes.

He'd had a dream, a bad dream (but was it a bad dream?). He couldn't quite put it together, but trying to remember it was making him feel peculiar, even frightened. Whips, there was something about whips… There had been sharp pain and soft furnishings, and firm hands grasping his shoulders, his thighs, his hips, as if testing him for malleability. He was trapped in some way, but willing too. There'd been a voice as well, he was sure of it… what had it said?

_Do you want me to hurt you, Professor?_

Dr Sycamore's elbow bashed into the side of the shower. "Ow!" He touched it gingerly and thought, I am banging into a lot of things lately. How will I preserve my schoolgirl complexion if I'm covered in bruises?

_Do you want me to hurt you, Professor? _the voice had said, so tenderly.

He switched off the shower and stepped gingerly out onto the bath mat. Yuck, mon dieu, I should wash that, he thought, treadling the spongy mat with his foot. He caught his own eye in the mirror and felt weirdly embarrassed. Well, he thought defensively, what if I brought someone home and they saw my disgusting bath mat? I still remember that time I persuaded that lawyer Claire in for 'coffee', dear heavens, the lecture she gave me about my towels, and then she never called again, what a wasted opportunity…

_Do you want me to hurt you, Professor?_

I could wear stripy socks today, thought Dr Sycamore. I could wear stripy socks and forget that my body decided to connect pain and fear with pleasure and arousal.

_Do you want me to hurt you, Professor?_

I suppose it could have been worse, Dr Sycamore continued to think, reaching for a towel and stepping back into the bedroom. Just after Genevieve broke up with me, I had that terrible dream where I was a teabag and she was using me to make tea while telling one of her friends about all the things I used to do to her in bed in a very sarcastic voice, and then I woke up with an erection the size of Prism Tower. Now _that_ really did make no sense. I don't even like tea. It tastes like chewed-up mud.

_Do you want me to hurt you, Professor?_

Which reminds me, I must ask the department HR for more coffee, we're running low. And the cafetière is broken, which will never do. Aren't we expecting visitors soon? Yes, we are, next week!

_Do you want me to hurt you, Professor?_

The words had repeated in Dr Sycamore's head often enough that, by the time he'd started getting dressed, he was perfectly comfortable with ignoring it. Reiteration had rendered it meaningless.

I expect I'll never remember what was happening in that dream, he thought cheerfully. It will just have to remain a sex mystery.

"A sex mystery!" he said out loud, strolling into the kitchen. "It's the best kind of mystery!"

His Fletchinder, who was snoozing on the back of the sofa in the through-lounge, woke up and gave him an incredulous glare. Dr Sycamore missed his Fennekin, who was down with the flu at the Pokémon hospital. The Fennekin never stared at him like he was a maniac.

_Do you _

_want me _

_to hurt you _

_Professor?_

_Do you want me?_

The words hung in the air, harmless and shorn of context.

The Fletchinder flapped over and nibbled reassuringly on Dr Sycamore's hair while he poured himself a bowl of muesli.

"I'm not crazy," he told it. "If you can think of a better sort of mystery than a sex mystery, I'll give you a Poké puff."

The Fletchinder shuffled down his arm to stand on the back of a kitchen chair and gave him another sceptical look. Dr Sycamore grinned and stroked its head with two of his knuckles. The Fletchinder sighed and closed its eyes happily.

"Yes, I must get a new cafetière soon, Beckett," he told the Fletchinder. "We have a very important visitor coming next Monday. He's the head of the Fleur-de-Lis Labs! And according to Margaux, he wants to pick my brains and steal my ideas! Can you imagine how awkward that would be if we didn't have any coffee?"

Really, the Fletchinder's face seemed to say. That's just fascinating.

"Now I come to think of it, I'd better issue Lysandre a formal invitation to the labs, in case he thought I was just drunk and sucking up at the launch party," mused Dr Sycamore, pouring his milk.

_Do you want me?_

_Do you want me to hurt you, Professor?_

_Oh God, yes, Lysandre, please, hurt me, please, I can take it…_

The Fletchinder gave a great squawk and flapped into the air as the milk bottle hit the floor and smashed.

In the bedroom, the alarm went off.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON

Lysandre insisted on the best of everything. His café served food made from the highest quality ingredients. His clothes were always immaculately tailored, enclosing his body as a bud would hold a flower. The engineers and scientists working in his labs commanded some of the highest salaries in Kalos in recognition of their exceptional output. He considered humanity's highest calling to be the pursuit of static perfection.

So when he was thwarted, his anger was tremendous. It would almost always manifest itself physically.

Lysandre hated getting angry. His apparent coldness, his famous air of quiet superiority, was painstakingly cultivated. He laid his soul out on ice to prevent an ugly collapse into fury. He was ashamed of his temper, because he felt it made him animalistic; his body's instinctive response to controlling anger was crude.

Fight, fuck or flee.

'Flee' wasn't too bad, when he was still at school, and then later as a university student. In both cases he'd been at institutions surrounded by vast open spaces, and he could run for miles without bumping into another soul. He'd actually become quite a good long distance runner and had competed on his university's athletics team; besides, the daily exercise was cathartic, and he'd found himself able to control his flame-like temper. But running was impossible in Lumiose City. The idea of jogging through a city made Lysandre feel ridiculous, and the thought of training on a running machine made him feel like a creature in a cage. So 'flee' was out of the question.

'Fuck' had awfully variable results and could leave him feeling much worse in the long run. The sex, when he was angry and seeking release, was always rough, sometimes even sadistic. He preferred not to use 'fuck'. Anyway, he couldn't now – it had been quite some time since he'd last been in a relationship.

His only option, then, was 'fight'. Although a gentleman did not go out looking for fights.

Along the North Boulevard, close to the Battle Institute, was a very discreet private gym. The door was plain and dark green and the windows were darkened. Anyone walking past would assume it was a house, if they assumed anything at all – it was so easy to ignore.

Inside was a topsy-turvy world, where the rules of the region were turned on their head. Inside, Pokémon trained humans.

Lysandre was once an exceptionally good long-distance runner. These days, with the help of his coach, he was becoming a rather good boxer.

His coach was a Hitmonchan.

Naturally, the Hitmonchan barely used its powers to fight with Lysandre. A creature capable of punching through concrete hardly needs the practice. But it was a surprisingly sensitive and perceptive soul, and took care to challenge Lysandre without ever doing him irreparable injury. It also always took care to never bruise Lysandre's face or damage his fingers, understanding that this would be unbearable to Lysandre. Wordlessly, intuitively, it finessed Lysandre's technique. It never reacted to the fact that Lysandre always seemed to come to the gym furious and walk out calm.

Lysandre never admitted it, but he was very grateful for, and very fond of, the Hitmonchan, whose name, incidentally, was Artur.

They were in the central boxing ring, where they had been for almost an hour. For half of that hour, they had been watched by a tall, slender, black woman, who was choosing her moment to interrupt and holding a bundle of something in her arms.

The bell rung for the hour. Lysandre and the Hitmonchan dropped their fists and bowed to one another.

"Merci, Artur, a good fight," said Lysandre, panting. The Hitmonchan nodded and passed him a towel.

Lysandre wiped the sweat from his eyes. He was stripped to the waist, and his observer leant forward on the ropes to admire his strong, slim body, with its air of coiled strength. She watched him run his hands through his hair and looked thoughtfully on the rapid rise and fall of his chest. Her expression was one of private desire.

The Hitmonchan, who had noticed her when she came in, gently touched Lysandre with one gloved hand. It was a good two foot shorter than Lysandre and had to settle for touching his waist. It indicated the woman with the twitch of its head.

Lysandre looked over. "Oh, Amina," he said, "bonjour."

"Bonjour, boss," said Amina, in her dry, faintly mocking voice. "I came to see how you were."

Lysandre nodded once more to Artur and climbed out of the ring. "How so?" he said. His voice was placid. Amina relaxed, not realising how tense she had been until that moment.

"I heard you had a little trouble in Lab 5," she said, cautiously.

Lysandre made a 'hmph' of dismissal. "Trouble? It was a disaster. The work has been set back about four months, and two Pokémon were injured. They were in a great deal of pain until we got them to the hospital." His eyes flashed angrily but he brought himself back under control.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Amina said, sincerely. "I came to see if there was anything I could do to help."

Lab 5 was devoted to work on evolutionary biology, and was a purely experimental lab. Amina was a chief engineer – a spectacularly talented one – working on the Holo Caster, but even she knew what Lab 5 meant to Lysandre.

"I appreciate the sentiment, but I doubt you can," said Lysandre. Amina kept her face mild; she worked closely with Lysandre and was used to his apparent rudeness. She shifted the bundle in her arms.

"What is that?" asked Lysandre, who was already striding towards the door that led to the showers.

"I'll show you when you come out," she called after him, and looked down at her arms.

"Petit, petit," she cooed at the bundle, which blinked two big, trustful eyes at her.

Amina settled herself on a bench and watched the peculiar human-Pokémon fights. She was trying not to think about Lysandre under the shower. She kept imagining the hot water carving paths down his lovely firm body, streaming down to the dark red fur in the join of his legs. She was as dizzy as a schoolgirl.

Artur wordlessly brought her a cup of coffee and (a thoughtful touch) a newspaper. She thanked him with a smile.

She was grateful for the newspaper, as it took Lysandre a full forty-five minutes to shower, towel off and dress. Amina found herself calculating how they'd manage in her apartment, which was a 'green' building and had a limited supply of hot water, and blushed. The little bundle, now on her lap, twitched in its blankets and made a soft 'mrrr' noise.

She rose as Lysandre approached, tucking the bundle under one arm.

"I assume you did not just come to provide a balm for my hurt feelings," he said, as if they were in the middle of a conversation and he had not disappeared for the best part of an hour. He looked fresh and flawless, as always.

"No, I was sent with a message," Amina admitted. She touched her pocket. "Apparently it needed to go to you directly, but you weren't in the labs."

"You could have sent a junior staff member," said Lysandre, adjusting his cuffs.

"Yes, I could have."

Lysandre looked at her steadily for a few seconds. Eventually, he said, "Let's go and sit in Delfine Square. It's a beautiful day. Au revoir, Artur, give my regards to your trainer."

The Hitmonchan waved them out.

It was a mild and sunny spring day in Lumiose City. Lysandre and Amina strolled side by side in silence. Neither of them noticed the admiring glances they drew – Lysandre had the inborn arrogance of an aristocrat who assumes, without checking, that he will be admired, and Amina was aware of her limpid, graceful beauty but not especially interested in it.

Delfine Square was a small but nicely-appointed public square with a preposterous modern art fountain in the middle. Amina and Lysandre sat down on a bench opposite it.

The bundle Amina had been carrying made a mournful 'mrooooaw!'

"I give in," said Lysandre. "What is it?"

Amina carefully unwrapped the bundle. Inside was a very young Litleo. Its front legs were set in plaster and there was a bandage around its stomach. Lysandre's blue eyes turned dull.

"I found him near my apartment. Someone had broken his legs and gashed his side. Not another Pokémon, I don't think. It looks too deliberate. He's been separated from his mother," Amina said, watching Lysandre.

He took the Litleo from her, handling the little Pokémon very gently. "These are very uncommon," he said, hoarsely.

"You are wondering who would do such a thing," said Amina. "So am I."

"The world is an ugly place, sometimes," said Lysandre. He looked paler than usual. The Litleo growled at him and he stroked its big, silly ears.

"I didn't know what do with him," said Amina, keeping her eyes on Lysandre. "I took him to a drop-in centre and got him bandaged up, but when I went to leave, he started crying and I felt awful… I've been carrying him around all day. He won't get into a Pokéball. He seems to be tolerating me, but he doesn't want to stay with me, of that I'm certain."

The Litleo was staring fearlessly into Lysandre's eyes. It couldn't quite sit up without help. It looked tiny and brave and foolish.

"I'll look after him," said Lysandre, and that was that. The Litleo blinked, yawned and curled up to go to sleep. Lysandre laid a hand on its back and watched it breathing. It was so young he could enclose it with both hands.

"Well," said Amina, "I'm glad I brought it to you." She felt as if something enormous and important had happened, and was faintly surprised to see that the day around them was carrying on as usual.

The Litleo purred in its sleep. Lysandre's normal colour was returning to his face and eyes.

"What was the message?" he asked Amina, still looking down at the Litleo.

Amina reached into her pocket and pulled it out. "It's rather eccentric," she said, a note of her usual dry humour returning to her voice. "You seemed to have been summoned to do battle with an Elder Mage, or something."

Lysandre glanced down at the message. It was rolled in a tube and sealed with a wax seal, stamped with a rearing Noivern. Written in Gothic script along the outside of the tube were the words _Seigneur du Feu_. He snatched it out of Amina's hands.

"Steady on," she said, "no one's broken the seal. I'm fairly sure you get cursed by a thousand ancient skeleton warriors if you break it open."

Lysandre tucked it into his jacket without reading it. Amina caught the edge of his expression – tight around the jaw, sharp around the eyes – and shut up.

The fountain tinkled.

"Would you like to-" Amina blurted out, just as Lysandre said,

"Do you know Dr Sycamore of the École Paranormale Superieure?"

Amina flicked her tongue over her lips, and adjusted one of her braids, playing for timr. "Why do you ask?"

"He's just been promoted to Professor," said Lysandre, "and I think his work is very, very interesting. I'm hoping to see his labs quite soon. I'm fascinated by his research." He looked at Amina properly for the first time since they'd sat down. "Oh, _Amina_," he said, in such a shockingly teasing tone that Amina felt her entire body got hot. Lysandre was smiling – a real, full and charming smile.

"It's nothing- it's not what you think," she stammered.

"Why do you look so embarrassed then?" he asked, leaning forward so that their shoulders bumped. The Litleo grumbled in its sleep.

Because you've never said my name like that before, and you're saying it like that for all the wrong reasons, she thought miserably.

"We dated," she said, "briefly."

If Amina had been able to look Lysandre in the eyes, she would have seen a storm of emotions swirling over his face, leaving nothing but a faint blush in their wake.

"Oh yes?" he said vaguely, his restraint returning.

"Yes, and it was fun for a few months." Amina sighed. "The thing about Gus Sycamore is… well, he's never broken up with a woman. He always gets dumped."

"C'est vrai?" murmured Lysandre, stroking the Litleo.

"But, you see… he always gets dumped because he puts himself in situations where they can, and will, dump him." She lowered her voice into a passable imitation of Dr Sycamore's flirtatious tenor. "He's all, 'oh mon petit chou-fleur, you cannot possibly stay with a man like me, I am so awful, I am married to my work, oh you will be so unhappy, oh how I suffer to think of you so unhappy'. He's a genius at shifting the blame."

Lysandre leaned in again and she felt her throat tighten. "Do you miss him?" he asked, softly. Amina desperately wanted to hug him for that. He sounded almost as if he was broken-hearted himself.

"Not at all," she said firmly. "This was almost a year and a half ago, and just weeks after we broke up, he started seeing this professor in the literature department, Genevieve Lagris. They stayed together for ages."

Lysandre snorted. "Fool," he said, more or less to himself, and Amina wanted to hug him again. "What's Genevieve like?"

"Oh, she's a total bitch. Good-looking, though," Amina conceded.

Already Lysandre's face was closing off, its familiar cold indifference returning. Amina felt as if a door was closing, about to trap her in a room forever. Quick, she told herself, ask him now.

"Would you like to see the Orchestre des Mondes Extraordinaires with me tomorrow night?" she said, in a rush.

Lysandre blinked.

"We can talk about Gus Sycamore again, if you like," she said, nudging him exaggeratedly, more to get over the embarrassment of asking him than anything else. Once again, she wasn't quite able to look him in the face and so missed the duelling expressions of embarrassment and gratitude fighting over Lysandre's features.

"That's a kind invitation, Amina," he said, slowly.

Amina sighed. "But it wouldn't be seemly to fraternize with an employee? But you don't really like classical music? But you think I have a terrible sense of humour?"

Lysandre touched her hand with his fingertips. "Not at all. I would be happy to join you." He looked cryptically into the middle distance. "It would be a very welcome distraction."

"Good," said Amina briskly, but her heart was singing.


	6. Saturday - the early high hours

SATURDAY NIGHT – THE EARLY HIGH HOURS

It had officially been Saturday for half an hour.

Lysandre hated Friday night. It was like a grimy smear across his week. Even in a city as splendid as Lumiose – _especially _in a city as splendid as Lumiose – the streets would turn putrid and frothy as the heaving mass of workaday drones hit the centre of the city in search of release. Lysandre privately believed that there should be an enforced four-day week; at least that way the week-end revelries would spread themselves across three nights instead of two and might halve the number of celebrants making a mess in his town.

His method of dealing with Fridays nights was to ignore them. He would work until very late in the labs (he avoided the café from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning – it was the city's new hot spot and would doubtless be full of idiots). He and two researchers were looking at some tissue samples from a Gyrados, painlessly extracted two days previously. They stayed late because they were devoted to the work; he stayed late because the outside world was unimaginably déclassé. When the clock struck midnight, Lysandre officially declared Saturday and got his driver to take him home. The researchers stayed – they'd get taxis later.

Ordinarily Lysandre would stay until one or two in the morning, but on this particular night he had the Litleo. The Litleo hadn't liked the labs. It had been too nervous to eat, even though it seemed hungry. It was happy enough getting into a Pokéball for Lysandre, but he'd been reluctant to leave it in one for too long. Despite his work at the cutting edge of modern technology, Lysandre could be quite old-fashioned about some things. Pokéballs worked by digitising and downloading living Pokémon, providing ample virtual space for the digital 'tissue' and holding them in comfortable stasis. All evidence suggested that the interior of a Pokéball was a pleasant place for a Pokémon, but Lysandre kept imagining the bones of the Litleo's damaged front legs being broken into their component molecules and feeling uncomfortable.

"You're projecting, boss," Amina had said, when they'd first got back to the labs. "In fact, worse, you're metonymising. Don't think of it as 'breaking' the leg into component molecules, because you'll just think of bones snapping."

Lysandre hadn't answered and Amina had murmured something about overactive imaginations.

As he sat in the back of his chauffeur-driven car, watching the city flash past like a garish diorama, he held the hungry Litleo in his lap and thought about Amina. He liked and respected her. She was extremely intelligent, first and foremost. She was dry, charming, sarcastic and quick-witted. She never panicked or went to pieces; indeed, she was one of the most level-headed and straight-talking women he'd ever met. And she was beautiful.

She is a valuable woman, he thought. She has worth.

These were his hard thoughts and he thought them severely. They did not quite block out the rustle of the sub-thoughts, so he tried again: She is a good friend.

This worked better, so he thought it again. The sub-thoughts faded off.

_That's not what you want though, is it, she's not what you want, you know what you want…_

The car pulled up outside his house. Lysandre thanked his driver and let himself in.

The house was on a quiet, tree-lined street in an affluent neighbourhood. Lysandre's house was divided into three levels, following an ancient social code that was largely ignored or unknown to most of Lumiose City's inhabitants but had been drummed into Lysandre from birth. The ground floor had no doors between rooms and only supporting walls – it was easy to move from one spacious room to the next. A light well in the ceiling lit a classical atrium in the centre. This was the public floor, where Lysandre could entertain, if he ever entertained. The rooms were bright and light and spotless – he barely used them. A marble panel, decorated with the coat of arms of the Château du Feu, hid a staircase. The staircase led to the second floor, which was the semi-public floor. Traditionally, these rooms would be smaller, less extravagantly decorated and could be closed off. Lysandre, on a decorative whim, had designed the entire floor in the style of an Oriental teahouse and _okiya_. The semi-public floor was an elegant maze of sliding paper doors; it took practise to distinguish the door for the lounge from the door for the guest bedroom. It would disorientate his friends, if Lysandre ever had any friends there.

The third floor was the private floor, where Lysandre's personal apartments were. He took the Litleo straight up here and carried him into the kitchen.

He put the Litleo on the floor, where it looked up at him hopefully and went, 'mroaw?'

I am going to look after you, said his thoughts and sub-thoughts together. No one will hurt you again.

The Litleo sneezed, producing a puff of flame from the end of its nose. Lysandre touched its ears affectionately.

"What would you like to eat?" he asked it. It gave him another hopeful look and Lysandre felt himself growing helpless and buoyant. He started to pull plates out at random.

The Litleo watched him as he filled the plates with things from the fridge and cupboards – kibble, Poké puffs, chopped liver, chicken, cream, water, fish, even a dish of tofu. He placed the plates around the Pokémon, stopping only when he'd run out of space and had backed himself into a cupboard.

The Litleo sat in the middle of a veritable crop circle of food samples, looking bewildered.

"Eat," said Lysandre. "Try something. You're hungry."

The Litleo made a bemused noise. Lysandre opened the fridge and rummaged around in the vegetable drawer. He showed it a head of broccoli and felt oddly proud when the Litleo growled at it.

"That's right," he said, "you don't like broccoli." He picked it up by the scruff of its neck and put it in front of the plate of chicken. The Litleo looked relieved and started to eat enthusiastically.

Lysandre dropped the broccoli in the sink and closed his eyes. His heart was beating so hard that he could feel it in his eardrums.

I will have a glass of water, he thought, and then I will find the Litleo somewhere to sleep.

As he moved, his foot hit one of the plates. The Litleo looked up curiously.

I will throw all of this out, he thought, put the plates in the dishwasher, have a glass of water and then find the Litleo somewhere to sleep.

The sub-thoughts were quiet, so he got on with it, leaving only the dish of water for the Litleo.

This Litleo is not going anywhere, he thought. No one is going to take him away from me. No one is here.

It was a reassuring thought but a lonely one too.

When the Litleo had finished eating, he picked it up again and carried it into his private living room. He had an antique (and never used) chaise longue in one corner, upholstered in dark red silk. A cashmere-wool throw in chocolate brown was draped carelessly but aesthetically across it. Lysandre lowered the Litleo onto the couch and wrapped the throw around it. The Litleo stared at the expensive materials with wide-eyed amazement. As Lysandre moved away, towards the bedroom, it started to cry anxiously.

Lysandre knelt by the side of the chaise longue and wrapped his arms around the little Pokémon. It rubbed its cheek against his cheek and purred. Lysandre felt a prickling sharpness in the back of his throat.

I am not going to cry, he thought icily.

He sat there, slumped over the chaise longue with his arms around the settling Litleo, until he started to doze. "It's been so long since I had a pet," he told the Litleo sleepily, and it was true. He'd had a lot of battle Pokémon over the years, but he'd last had a pet Pokémon at the age of fourteen, a decade and a half ago.

Submerged memories, long ago and faraway ones, bubbled to the surface of his mind. Tiredness was lowering his defences.

The du Feus, as a family, traditionally specialised in Fire and Dark Pokémons, with a few complementary variations, such as Dragon or Ice. While Lysandre was still living at the family seat – while he was still welcome there – the Comte de la Masséna du Feu-Calincourt's chief battle Pokémon had consisted of an old, grim Charizard and a Dragonite. Both, like the Comte, were technically retired but still dangerous. As Lysandre grew older, the two beasts spent less time in the air or in training and more in their Pokéballs. For all Lysandre knew, they were dead by now. The Charizard surely must be – it was already fully evolved when Lysandre was born.

The Comte also had an Umbreon, a fine-looking creature who uneasily straddled the division between battle Pokémon and pet Pokémon. The young Lysandre had been fond of the Umbreon, which was aloof but good-natured and let him pet it.

The Comtesse, Célestine, did not have any battle Pokémon. She came into the marriage with a Persian and a neglected bird-type Pokémon that Lysandre could not even remember – it escaped when he was a child. He'd liked the Persian too, although like the Umbreon it was aloof. When he was about seven, his father gave his mother a Purugly for her birthday. It had been a present disguised as an insult and drove an even deeper wedge between the two of them. Lysandre didn't care. The Purugly was a monstrous, grumpy creature with a heart of gold. He adored it. During the summers of his boyhood, which seemed now to be a faraway rural idyll, he'd spent many happy hours wandering the grounds and the wider estates with the patient Purugly in tow, while his parents stayed in different wings of the château (his mother keeping to her rooms and her sedatives, wandering the widow's walk like a drunken Ophelia).

On rare occasions they would be joined by the refined Umbreon, which had probably been tasked by Lazare du Feu with keeping an eye on the boy, but Lysandre had been none the wiser. He had a few friends in the local village, most of whom were too young for their own Pokémon but who had a youthful interest in all types, and they'd been equally adoring of the grouchy, gentle Purugly.

These, in retrospect, were the happiest years of his life.

When he was eleven years old and about to leave for boarding school, he was presented with his first Pokémon, in a Pokéball. He'd secretly hoped for a Purrloin, or even (in his dreams) an Absol, but he was given a Houndour. It was then he realised that what he really wanted, more than a Pokémon that carried on the proud Fire and Dark traditions of the Château du Feu, was a cat Pokémon. Because cat Pokémon were intrinsically graceful. Because they had a snobbish, self-sufficient beauty that they wore like armour. Because even in their cruelties they were elegant. Because they were sweet little things and they were killers. Because his mother had cat Pokémon, and he loved his mother. Because sometimes his mother reminded him of a cat.

Lysandre had been an obedient son and a good trainer, and he and the Houndour had rubbed along just fine at boarding school. It had evolved into a Houndoom when he was sixteen or so, and remained his primary battle Pokémon until he left for university. He'd left Kalos then as well, intent on studying overseas, desperate to get away from his overbearing father and the mother he had increasingly come to despise as weak and easily cowed. His father had demanded the Houndoom back as 'property of the estate'. Lysandre hadn't argued. Lazare wouldn't harm a Pokémon that he had invested in…

The memories stirred, stretched, like grotesque sea creatures waking.

One summer, many years ago, when Lysandre was fourteen and back from boarding school, he'd found a stray Meowth in the rose garden. It was asleep.

He'd tucked it under his arm and trotted back to his room. It had woken up halfway but was content enough. The Purugly had sniffed it and seemed to shrug. It wore a cantankerous expression but it accepted the newcomer graciously. Similarly, the Persian and later the Umbreon adapted to the presence of the scruffy little commoner in their midst. Even the Houndour, which generally kept out of Lysandre's way during the holidays and ran with the battle Pokémon of the estate, had licked the Meowth once in a friendly fashion.

Lysandre had loved the Meowth. He didn't put it in a Pokéball – Lazare kept stock of all the Pokéballs on the estate and would have noticed – but over the course of the summer, he tamed it. He used to feed it by sitting it in his lap, holding its front two paws in one of his hands and pushing food directly into its mouth. It was probably very uncomfortable but the Meowth had put up with it. He'd called it Pas-du-Chat, which the Meowth also obviously thought was stupid but also put up with. Lysandre gave it some rudimentary battle training but mostly he just played with it. It was a naughty creature but very trusting. It slept curled up by his neck at night.

When the autumn came round and it was time for him to go back to boarding school, he had planned to sneak it out with him. The plan had been to slip the Meowth into the Houndour's Pokéball and travel with the Houndour by his side. The plan would have worked if Lysandre had not left the château on the same night that the wild Greninja, which had been terrorising the lakes by the estate, chose that evening to reveal itself.

Lazare du Feu had sent his Dragonite and a couple of estate Pokémon (the twin Sandiles, Lysandre remembered) after it. The Greninja had been freakishly strong and evasive; years spent living wild in the region had made it tough. They'd chased it to the edge of the woods that fringed the estate, attacking it all the while. Lysandre had ridden with his father after the creature and, despite himself, had admired the man's tactical skills and his ruthlessness.

The disaster had come when the Greninja was close to defeated. They needed to capture it in a Pokéball before it fled into the woods. But Lysandre and his father had been separated from the rest of the hunting party and the only Pokéball in their vicinity was the one hanging from Lysandre's waist.

Lazare had snatched it from his son's belt and pressed the button to capture. Lysandre had thought, oh no, and then everything went wrong.

The capture failed, of course. The Pokéball, confused by the conflicting signals, had discharged Pas-du-Chat onto the long grass. In the mere seconds that it took for the confused Meowth to sit up and look around, the Greninja had gathered up the reserves of its flagging strength and fled. The Comte had looked from his son's face to the common little cat on the grass and come to the correct conclusion. As Lysandre had run to pick Pas-du-Chat up, his father had hit him across the face. The momentum threw him to the ground. Blood filled his mouth.

Lysandre remembered the rest of the hellish night in scraps. He'd been beaten, of course, later on, but at fourteen he was already a proud young man and a bitter one, and he hadn't cried out once. He remembered that the incident had caused a savage fight between the Comte and the Comtesse, with his father accusing his mother of allowing their son to grow 'soft' and 'stupid' and his mother, half-dumb with prescription sedatives, insulting his father's abilities as a Pokémon trainer and a husband. But most of all, he remembered what happened to Pas-du-Chat.

After the failed capture, Lazare had seized the Meowth and ridden back to the château. He'd called it a fleabag, a cousin of filth, and much worse names. Lysandre had chased them but he hadn't been fast enough. As Lazare approached the château, Lysandre riding up behind him, he'd announced to the assorted estate staff that the Meowth he was holding had occasioned the escape of the Greninja, and at first light he wanted the creature boxed up and released in the wild edges of the region, as far away from the estate as possible.

Normal-type Pokémon are born semi-domesticated – they are used to living alongside humans and are comfortable co-inhabitants of cities and villages. If he understood Lazare's words, Pas-du-Chat must have understood the banishment as a death sentence; he was only a small Meowth, and a pet one at that. Although, even now, Lysandre couldn't be sure whether Pas-du-Chat had understood the terms of his exile, or had just been afraid of all the people, all the noise, all the commotion. With a shriek and a twist, he'd thrown himself out of Lazare's grasp and raced across the gardens.

Everyone had chased him, Lysandre included, calling out to his pet, but Pas-du-Chat must have been unable to hear him above the shouting. He'd looked round once, an expression of abject terror on his little face, and seen the storm of humanity and Pokémon bearing down on him. He'd kept running blindly, barely watching where he was going, leaping over bushes and ornamental stones, scattering flower petals. He must have been half-mad with fear, because he'd played in the garden often enough to know what was in it. He would have known that at the end of the garden, a lip of long grass concealed a deep well.

He must have forgotten.

Two of the gardeners had fished out his body in the early hours of the dawn. Lysandre didn't know what they did with it. He never found out. He liked to think they buried it.

Lysandre had been locked in his room, where he spent a sleepless, sickening night, and had received his beating after Pas-du-Chat was recovered. He was beaten for keeping a common cat as a pet, he was beaten for the subterfuge and concealment involved in its keeping, he was beaten for causing the escape of a dangerous and valuable Greninja, he was beaten for missing the train back to school. The Comte administered the beating himself – he was not afraid, he said nastily to his son, to get his hands dirty.

Many years later, after Lazare and Lysandre had cut off all communication apart from the yearly allowance deposited in Lysandre's trust fund, Lysandre realised that he might have been beaten to assuage Lazare's guilt. His father was a cold, austere man, but he would not have wished for a Pokémon to die so traumatically. He probably would not have forced the little animal into the wild region, once he'd calmed down the following morning. Nevertheless, Lysandre never forgave him for it. Out of the wrongs he felt his father had done him, from banning him from seeing his village friends once he was at boarding school, to controlling his finances, to emotionally abusing his mother, to beating him, to attempting to crush Lysandre's spirit and wring out his soul, it was the memory of little Pas-du-Chat's death that haunted Lysandre above all things.

"You would put the blame for all the wrongs of the world on my shoulders," the Comte had said, the last time they had seen each other, "but, my son, the world was soiled the first day that man stamped his brute foot on it. You will learn this, one day. You are the same man as me: a foot soldier of the final reckoning, trekking the filth of his ancestors across a ruined Paradise."

Lysandre, revolted, had not responded. He'd wanted to see his mother but she was 'incapacitated' – drunk or high in her chambers, too far gone to even remember she had a son. He never returned. That was seven years ago.

He awoke in his apartments with a start.

The Litleo was fast asleep on the chaise longue. Lysandre groaned. He'd been in an awkward position when he'd started to drift off, and now his back was twinging. The injuries he'd sustained in the boxing ring were making their presence known, with interest. His feet and hands buzzed numbly when he tried to get up. The wall clock showed half past two in the morning.

I am going to bed, Lysandre told himself, and tucked the throw around the peaceful Pokémon. The sub-thoughts snickered incomprehensibly.

He stepped soundlessly into his bedroom and closed the door. The shadows were dark blue and black, folding about him like wings. He didn't turn the light on – somehow, he couldn't quite bear to see the neatly made bed, the pressed sheets, the untouched pillows.

His room was like a beautiful shrine to loneliness.

I have a pet now, he thought defensively, as the familiar tired sadness tugged at his limbs. I will look after him. He will depend on me.

_Someone to play with_, said the sub-thoughts.

Yes, I have a pet to play with, thought Lysandre, cautiously.

_Someone to play with_, the sub-thoughts repeated, then went quiet.

The room was oppressively quiet. Lysandre pulled off his cravat and undid the top buttons of his jacket. From his inside jacket pocket, the letter from Professor Axe tumbled to the floor. Lysandre had already read it; it demanded his presence in her anterooms on Sunday afternoon and was signed, somewhat surprisingly, from the Châtelaine Margaux Hortense des Aix. The professor had decided to pull rank, counting on Lysandre's old-fashioned sense of etiquette to overcome his mistrust of the wily old woman.

She'll want to talk to me about Mega Evolution and Dr Sycamore, of course. She's as wary of me as I am of her. I must, I _must_ get Dr Sycamore on my side, thought Lysandre.

And all at once, the well-worn images flicked through his mind again: Dr Sycamore laughing, Dr Sycamore looking pensive, Dr Sycamore's lips parting, Dr Sycamore's closing his eyes blissfully…

_Someone to play with_, said his sub-thoughts maliciously. He was so tired and it had been such a difficult day, he didn't fight it. He closed his eyes against the darkness and let the sweet, cruel thoughts in.

He started to undress slowly and deliberately. How would he look if he were being watched? If someone were watching him from the bed, perhaps, lying on their side and propping themselves up on one elbow?

"You are an awful tease, mon cher ami," Dr Sycamore would say, flirtatiously but with a hint of a tremor in his voice.

Lysandre let the jacket drop and unbuttoned his shirt with one hand, touching the other to his throat and mouth. He imagined Dr Sycamore's eyes following the progress of the buttons hungrily and slid the shirt off his shoulders. Did Dr Sycamore like chest hair? He would surely like the hard masculinity of Lysandre's body. (Oh, yes, of course he liked women, oh but surely, surely he'd like it.) He was surely the sort of tactile man who would dig his fingers into the firm flesh of Lysandre's chest and stomach. He could scrape his nails down Lysandre's body, dragging his fingers through the hair, hurting Lysandre deliciously.

"You have such a sexy body," Dr Sycamore would say huskily.

No, no, he wouldn't say something like that, thought Lysandre crossly, crushing his out-of-control sub-thoughts. He's not some sweaty, immature student having a drunken fumble. When he touched me, when he touched me like that, he would say…

"You're like a big cat. You're so beautiful and so dangerous. You could do me some damage, no?"

Yes, fine, good, thought Lysandre. His cock had grown so hard that it was pressed obscenely against the fabric of his trousers. His slid his hand under his belt and felt it twitch. When he undid his flies and pulled it out, enclosing it firmly, he felt such a deep burst of pleasure that he had to bite his lip to keep from groaning.

He imagined Dr Sycamore lying back. Would the academic be naked by now? No – he'd be in a state of feverish half-undress. Lysandre could climb onto the bed, kneel over him, tear the clothes away. Dr Sycamore would cry out, in fear and arousal. "Be gentle with me, I'm not so tough," he might say, or, "I can take it, whatever you do," or, "Hurt me, please, Lysandre, hurt me."

Lysandre stripped off the rest of his clothes and knelt on the bed, his cock in hand. He was stroking rhythmically, his breaths coming in sharp bursts.

Conflicting images sought for precedence in his head. He was kneeling above Dr Sycamore, his hand tangled in those delectable dark curls, while one of Dr Sycamore's hand fumbled frantically for Lysandre's cock… he was kissing Dr Sycamore, biting his neck and shoulders, pinching a delicate shell-pink nipple while his hard-on rubbed against Dr Sycamore's stomach… he was between Dr Sycamore's legs, running his tongue along the hard, hot length of Dr Sycamore's erection, running his hands up that lithe, twisting body, listening to Dr Sycamore moan his name, feeling his long fingers coiling through his hair as he begged for more… he was making Dr Sycamore beg, he was kissing him, he was begging Dr Sycamore, he was holding him, biting him, touching him, hurting him, caressing him, succumbing to him, overpowering him…

Oh Augustine, oh Augustine, what have you done to me?

Lysandre fell to gasping and cried out, once.

Almost immediately, he felt ashamed and angry. He cleaned up as best he could in the dark, using one of the clean handkerchiefs in the drawer by his bed. The emptiness of the room was oppressively apparent and the silence blocked out his ears. Lysandre was alone; he had always been alone.

You don't even know him, he reminded himself, furious and miserable. And he certainly doesn't know you. You're a rich bastard on the edge of his radar. He'll never want you. _He'll never want you_.

Disgusted and exhausted, he wrapped himself up in the sheets and forced his mind under, into the blissful deadness of sleep.


	7. Saturday - the fine dark evening

SATURDAY – THE FINE DARK EVENING

"Late as usual, Gus," said Dr Raine comfortably.

"We ordered your food for you," said Hua An, "as a punishment. You like viande de cheval, right?"

Dr Sycamore leaned theatrically on the back of his chair and panted. One hand clutched at a stitch in his side and a lock of hair was glued sweatily to his forehead like a kiss curl.

"Mes chers amis," he said, heaving breaths, "forgive me. I quite lost track of the time…"

"And her name, Gus?" asked Hua An, selecting a piece of bread from the bread basket and tearing a messy piece. "I take it you bothered to find out her name?"

"Vyvy," said Dr Sycamore, flopping into his chair. Hua An poured him a glass of water from the carafe.

"Your Fennekin?" said Hua An, puzzled, which Dr Raine said, "Of course, she's in the hospital. I'm sorry, Gus, I forgot."

This was a white lie. Dr Sycamore had, in fact, gone to the hospital to visit his Fennekin with Beckett, the Fletchinder, to keep him company, but that had been much earlier in the afternoon. He wasn't going to tell his friends why he was so late for the pre-concert dinner; he was barely admitting it to himself. He made a vague moue of dismissal and drank the water gratefully.

Hua An gave him a sympathetic look and said, "I hope she's feeling better. But, pour l'amour de dieu, Gus, why didn't you take a taxi? You're dripping sweat like a Slugma."

"Ah, well, you see, there _was_ a taxi," said Dr Sycamore, settling back. This bit was true, although the taxi had been near his apartment rather than near the hospital. "And I was just getting in, you know, getting all those opinions that I don't actually hold ready so that I could agree with the taxi driver… When, tout à coup, coming out of the mists like a siren-"

"It's actually a nice clear day," said Dr Raine mildly.

"-coming out of the _figurative_ mists like a _figurative_ siren was this lovely young lady! If only you could have seen her!"

"Eyes like sparkling eyes," murmured Hua An.

"Hair like shiny hair," said Dr Raine. They caught one another's eyes and grinned.

"She was all bows and ribbons, my friends, like a little present waiting to be unwrapped," continued Dr Sycamore, flicking his friends in the forehead. "She was carrying a Gothorita and tottering along on these very high, very sexy heels that she couldn't really walk in. 'Oh wait!' she said to me, 'please, could we share the taxi? I'm so terribly late!'"

"Oh my ears and whiskers," said Hua An. Dr Sycamore chuckled.

"Well, quite… I was very taken with her, she was like a character from a children's story book. I said, mademoiselle, I think you should take the taxi. After all, I said, I don't think Prince Charming can ride the pumpkin with the beautiful princess to the ball, not this early on in the story, it would ruin our romantic meeting in the middle of the waltz."

"Putain, that is the worst chat-up line in the history of chat-up lines," said Hua An.

"Oh yes, absolutely," agreed Dr Sycamore, "and it worked. She gave me her number before she sped off into the distance."

The two other men made 'unbelievable' noises. Dr Raine said, "And then?"

"Why, then I ran all the way here, Benjamin. All the damn way."

Dr Sycamore smiled and ducked his head as his friends howled with laughter. The longer he sat with them, the more normality felt as if it was reasserting itself. Look at me, he thought, sitting here having a nice dinner with my nice friends like a nice normal person and definitely not some sort of frantic deviant stalker.

They really had ordered him viande de cheval.

Dr Benjamin Raine was a lecturer in the environmental biology department, who taught a course on regenerative and symbiotic habitats used by Grass and Bug-type Pokémon. He and Dr Sycamore had been undergraduates together, and in many ways Dr Raine was the Technicolor photo of Dr Sycamore's black-and-white negative (or so Dr Sycamore would insist). His nickname at university was 'Angelface', and he looked like an angel – he had curling dark blonde hair, a handsome, mild face, grey eyes and a wistful smile. He played the piano and had been happily married for several years to a woman named Katrinne, whom Dr Sycamore found delightful and fascinating because she had never, ever shown any sexual interest in Dr Sycamore whatsoever.

Hua An worked in the charity sector, probably – although Dr Sycamore and Dr Raine had known him since their mid-twenties, they still weren't really sure what he did. He was a short, slim man with high cheekbones and a chippy manner. Sometimes he'd disappear out of their lives for months at a time, only to reappear with a load of extra cash, or a black eye, or a hicky. They were fairly sure he was an orphan, and he seemed to be bisexual (they weren't really sure about this), and he had two Pokémon that rarely left their Pokéballs, at least not around the academics. Dr Sycamore privately thought of him as the small, sly Porthos of their Three Musketeers.

"I'm looking forward to the Orchestres des Mondes Extraordinaires tonight," Dr Raine was saying. "Apparently they have an Alakazam from the Kantos region playing the theremin. You're missing out, Hua An."

Dr Sycamore looked up from his plate, surprised. "You're not coming?"

"No, I'm joining you for dinner, then I'm off for a bit, then I'll come and have a drink with you," said Hua An. "And don't even think about asking what I'm doing in the intervening three hours, because I won't tell you."

"And her name, Hua An?" said Dr Raine. "I take it you bothered to get her name?"

They laughed again, and Dr Sycamore let himself relax. Everything is going to be okay, he thought happily. I've no need to worry about that strange man and his strange hair and his strange cigarettes. I've got enough strange people in my life and I like them all and I don't have any room for any more, so there.

After dinner, he and Dr Raine were waved into a taxi by Hua An.

"You wouldn't like to share it with us?" asked Dr Raine.

"No thank you," said Hua An, "you smell."

"You're not going in the same direction?" asked Dr Sycamore, waggling his eyebrows.

"Stop fishing, Gus!" Hua An grinned. "Call me when you're out, I'll come and meet you."

"Do you think this is all an elaborate ruse and we're actually going to discover that Hua An is the first violin?" whispered Dr Raine, as the taxi pulled away.

"I wouldn't put it past him, Ben."

The Orchestre des Mondes Extraordinaires, the ground-breaking human-Pokémon orchestra, was playing at the Opéra Némélios, the city's oldest theatre. It was a gigantic, extravagant confection that extended far beyond the auditorium and backstage. There were extensive attics, a ballet school attached to the main building, and cellars that were said to stretch for miles into underground caves. Some of these were flooded. There were rumours of rare and wild Pokémon inhabiting its dark recesses. Some even said it was haunted by an opera ghost, although urban legend disagreed on whether or not he was human.

Dr Sycamore and Dr Raine had what Dr Raine referred to as 'semi-demi-cheap seats', closer to the stage than the people who could arrive wearing jeans and carrying their own sandwiches, but a balcony away from the people who would arrive in evening dress and have champagne pre-ordered for the interval. The main house was divided in such a way that the aristocrats need never mix with the plebs. Those who sat in the Stalls, the Royal Boxes and the Royal Circle used the Grand Bar on the ground floor, a vast, high-windowed, chandeliered, sparkling affair that was practically as big as the stage. The so-called 'semi-demi' cheaps had a bar in the middle of the building, which was chic and cool. In the roof, nestled among the eaves, the students and the artists who could barely afford tickets drank their pre-theatre, interval and afterparty drinks in a raucous little room that, on good nights, stayed open well past legal hours and turned into a sort of unofficial nightclub.

The Opéra Némélios was so huge, and the layers of the audience had so little in common, that people were generally happy to use the bar designated for their use. However, an unacknowledged privilege of being good-looking and good-natured was being able to do whatever you felt like doing and never comprehending the consequences.

The academics wandered down to the Grand Bar, on the grounds that it was shiny and they liked shiny.

"Why on earth do they insist serving champagne in such pissy little cups?" murmured Dr Raine, as they waited at the glass-panelled bar to be served.

"They are supposed to mimic the shape of a breast," replied Dr Sycamore. "In truth, I have never seen a breast in the shape of a flying saucer, but I suppose it takes all sorts. For goodness sake, Ben, order a prosecco, at least you'll get a decent serving and you won't have to lick the booze out of the champagne bowl like a cat."

"Or order a martini," remarked a cool voice behind them. "They are more decorative and they work faster."

Oh, thought Dr Sycamore, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh no.

"That's very good advice, monsieur," said Dr Raine mildly. "I see that you've taken it, otherwise I'd offer to buy you one." He flashed a smile at a bartender and asked for two martinis.

"Not too much vermouth," he called after the bartender. "Please just show the gin the vermouth bottle, that's about all the vermouth we need."

"Why is it, Professor, that every time we meet, you seem to feel the need to get drunk?" continued the voice.

Dr Sycamore still hadn't worked up the courage to turn around. He could feel himself blushing so hard he wouldn't be surprised to find that his hair had turned pink. He was remembering the results of his anxious afternoon indoors with the curtains drawn.

"Oh, you know each other?" said Dr Raine, who was looking from his friend to the person standing behind them.

"Permit me to introduce myself," said the voice, still very cool – icy, almost. "I am Lysandre."

"Enchanté," murmured Dr Raine. "I'm Dr Benjamin Raine. Gus, won't you say hello to your friend, or are you too busy staring at that mixologist in the low-cut blouse?"

Dr Sycamore forced himself round.

"Bon soir, mon ami," he said faintly. "How lovely to see you. What a marvellous suit you are wearing."

Lysandre, who was as faultlessly dressed as always, smiled briefly. He was holding a martini with a twist of lemon and appeared to have stepped directly out of a film noir. "Bon soir," he said, and leaned down to kiss Dr Sycamore politely on both cheeks.

The kisses were briefer and brisker than they had been on that extraordinary night at La Jolie Gardevoir, but Dr Sycamore felt even more disturbed by them. As Lysandre drew back he felt like his entire body was shuddering and lifting closer to Lysandre, as if Lysandre were the North Pole and he were a spinning compass.

I must stop this, he thought frenziedly. He must be able to see, surely they can all see! Although what it is they are seeing, even I myself could not say. Mon dieu, I wish this strange man would go away, how can I concentrate, I cannot stop staring at him.

He suddenly envied Dr Raine's permanently easy-going expression; it was even better than Lysandre's chilly, superior mask at keeping his true thoughts concealed.

"Gus, Ben, what are you doing here!" called another voice, and a beautiful woman swept up behind Lysandre.

It's like the finale of a soap opera in here, thought Dr Sycamore.

"Amina, how lovely!" said Dr Raine, brightening up. "You look glorious. Do you have a drink? Oh yes, you do have a drink. How are you?" He pecked Amina on both cheeks and started making small talk.

Dr Sycamore watched Lysandre watching him and thought, well? Well? What are you staring at? What do you see? Do you see that earlier today, after half an hour at the computer, I found a photo of you from your university years? You were no more than twenty-one and you had just run a long race. You were sweating, your face was wild and triumphant. You looked like a conquering archangel.

"You're looking well, Ben. How's Katrinne?" Amina was saying. Her face was smiling and relaxed but her eyes were uneasy.

Dr Sycamore was still staring at Lysandre.

Do you see what the first thing I imagined was, when I saw that photo? Do you see that I groaned out loud and had to put my head down on the table, because it was almost too much to bear? Do you see all that in me, right now?

He forced himself to drag his eyes away from the pitiless searchlight of Lysandre's gaze.

"Amina, mon amour, mon petit chou-fleur, how are you," he said, switching into Flirt Autopilot and kissing his ex-girlfriend. "I swear you get more divine every day. In fact I see you are dressed as some sort of classical goddess today."

Amina was wearing a sort of draped silk dress in orange, fringed with gold. She looked ravishing, and Dr Sycamore was relieved to be able to look at her and recall how attractive he had found her. She was a tall woman, almost as tall as him, with small, soft breasts and willowy hips, and for the months that they had been lovers, her long, sinuous body had driven him wild. It seemed like so long ago.

"Lysandre, have you met Amina Ndiaye? Amina, this is Seigneur Lysandre du Feu," he said, and was savagely gratified to see Lysandre flinch. Dr Raine cocked an eyebrow at Lysandre.

"Actually, Gus, we are here together," said Amina calmly, laying one hand on Lysandre's arm. "We're in Box Deux."

"What a fun set of coincidences. Tell me, Seigneur du Feu, are you the same du Feu as heads the Fleur-de-Lis Labs? I've read an awful lot about your work in the newspapers," said Dr Raine smoothly.

"He is, I work there myself," said Amina. Dr Sycamore noticed she had flashed her eyes at Dr Raine, and they seemed to be determinedly making conversation against the rising wall of awkwardness. "But I hear some of the researchers in your department have made an interesting breakthrough on the hibernation patterns of the Vivillion?"

"Oh yes, about that," Dr Raine said, and blathered blithely on, while Dr Sycamore stared in visible shock at the sleeve of Lysandre's jacket where Amina had laid her hand, half-expecting to see a bloody handprint. It struck him for the first time how perfect Lysandre and Amina looked together, two tall and majestic celestial bodies moving through the dim foam of ordinary people.

"You look pale, Professor," said Lysandre, in a voice so soft that only Dr Sycamore could hear him. He'd moved closer without appearing to move – how had he done that? Or had he, Dr Sycamore, drawn closer to Lysandre without thinking, a pathetic satellite in his orbit?

"It's all these reflective surfaces, dear me, there are so many versions of me, which one should I wink at first?" said Dr Sycamore, but his voice was quavering. He was digging his nails into his palm and found himself hoping he could make himself bleed. Something had broken inside him, something he hadn't realised was there in the first place.

Dr Raine pressed the martini into his hand. Dr Sycamore was vaguely aware of his friend gently adjusting his fingers around the stem of the glass, to make sure he was gripping it properly, and thought in hollow panic, Ben knows!

He let the world spin and change.

His mouth was opening and closing so he must be talking, and Amina and Dr Raine were laughing, so it must have be a funny pleasantry. Around them people moved back and forth like pawns in a chess game, barely aware of their own existence. Lysandre was silent, unsmiling; he was the still point of the turning world.

Yes, I admit it, Dr Sycamore was thinking, as he quipped and chatted absently. I spent my afternoon looking for any information I could find on Lysandre du Feu and it wasn't because I'm interested in his work. It's because I can't stop thinking about him. I am fixated on him. I admit it, every picture I found I copied and dropped into a folder for future reference, I gorged myself on images of him. I used the images of him to feed my imagination, to construct an alternative Lysandre, a version of him that was with me, beside me, touching me, touching my face, my neck, my shoulders, my body. And then more than that, I imagined those big, dominating hands doing much more.

I admit it, when I thought about him touching me, I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry because I realised I could not think of anything that would bring me more pleasure, and I knew that it would never happen.

The bell rang out for the five-minute mark.

"Amina," said Lysandre, breaking out of his silence with the suddenness of a statue coming to life. "We should get back to the box."

Amina, who had been participating in the jolly charade of easy conversation with the academics, look momentarily thrown off balance. She recovered quickly.

"Yes," she said, "of course. Gentleman," this delivered in an arch, mock-flirtatious tone, "perhaps we'll see you at the interval."

"Indeed," said Dr Raine. "Enjoy the first half."

"It's a very sympathetic symphony," said Dr Sycamore, whose mouth had now completely disattached itself from his brain. "The movement will move you."

Every time he spoke, he could see Lysandre stiffening and turning slightly to watch him. It made Dr Sycamore feel like a criminal.

You see me, he thought, glancing at the unsmiling Lysandre, and you see, with your holy eyes, all that I have imagined about you, and to you I am less than the dust you kick from your perfect shoes. You despise me for my very ordinariness, for my weakness in desiring you, for my cowardice in desiring you silently. You despise me because I am a man, and you have no use for the desire of another man.

I want you so much, I can barely breathe.

As the two parties started to separate, he called out, "Lysandre!" and, without thinking, caught the man's elbow. Just touching him momentarily was enough to make Dr Sycamore feel like he'd stuck his fingers into an electric socket and he let go quickly.

"Yes?" asked Lysandre, his blue eyes glittering peculiarly. He held his arm at an odd angle, as if Dr Sycamore had wiped slime on his elbow and he didn't want to ruin his suit by lowering his arm.

Every little thing, thought Dr Sycamore hysterically, every little thing, I analyse. How did his jacket feel? The fabric? How does he hold his arms? His body? Is he looking at me with disgust or curiosity? Did he shave today? Has he bitten his lips afresh? I'm going crazy.

"I wanted to say," said Dr Sycamore, "that you really must come by on Monday." He swallowed. "To have a look round our labs, and to meet my brilliant and charming research assistants. I'm sure you'd be interested in the work we're doing. I'd love for the university labs and the Fleur-de-Lis Labs to have some kind of mutually beneficial relationship. We must not underestimate the importance of Mega Evolution."

The sentences were wrung out of him with an effort.

Lysandre's eyes had gone flat and opaque.

"An excellent idea," he said, his voice devoid of expression. "I'll come by Monday afternoon. Perhaps before lunch." He smiled so swiftly that Dr Sycamore wondered whether he'd imagined it. "And then afterwards you must come by the Café Lysandre, Professor. The best thinking is done on a full stomach."

"Wonderful! Marvellous! The only thing I like more than Pokémon is eating!" said Dr Sycamore, clapping his hands together. Mon dieu, he thought, I must look like a hysteric.

"À plus, then, my friend," he said instead. "Goodbye, lovely Amina."

Amina blew him a kiss.

"À bientôt, Professor," said Lysandre. "I look forward to seeing you on Monday, when your title will be official." He made a sort of graceful half-bow to Dr Raine, then, with Amina's hand tucked into his arm, he swept off.

Dr Raine and Dr Sycamore took the lifts back up to their level. As they were walking to their seats, Dr Raine leaned over to mutter in Dr Sycamore's ear, "What the hell is going on, Gus?"

"Oh, bof," said Dr Sycamore, waving his hand with a nonchalance that he definitely did not feel. "I met the man at the launch party for his café the other day, and I found out he was head of the Fleur-de-Lis Labs. Well, it was too good an opportunity to pass up; if I can get him interested in our work, then I can get access to some of his research. We're so close to cracking Mega Evos, Ben! We need all the help we can get. Besides, they're very reputable labs – it would be nice if some of the graduate students or research assistants could get some short-term placements there, or something. Margaux did warn me about his lack of scruples, but I'm pretty sure we could hold our own…" He tailed off in the face of Dr Raine's mournful grey gaze.

"That's not what I'm talking about," said his friend, "and you know it."

They shuffled into their seats, treading on toes.

"I don't know what you mean," said Dr Sycamore, hopelessly.

Dr Raine snorted. "Come off it, Gus. I've known you since you were eighteen. I've seen you embroiled in about fifteen love affairs with The One, and she's always a different woman. Don't think you can hide anything from me. I've held your hair back while you've been sick in a bathtub, even though there was a perfectly good toilet right next to it."

"I just felt safer in the bathtub," mumbled Dr Sycamore.

"This is about Amina, isn't it?"

And Dr Sycamore had to admit, it partly was.

"Yes."

"I thought so. You were acting very oddly. You were chattering away but your eyes were distressed. You kept on looking at that man du Feu, who strikes me as very rude, incidentally."

Dr Sycamore shrugged.

"You're jealous, aren't you?" Dr Raine tapped his hand very kindly. "You poor fool. You're jealous of the man who is with your old girlfriend, even though you weaselled out of that relationship to get the impossible Genevieve into bed. Oh, Gus. You poor idiot. I can see why. Amina was the better woman." He gave Dr Sycamore a one-armed hug, knocking the opera glasses of the woman behind them.

"Yes, I am jealous of him," Dr Sycamore whispered to his knees, as the lights were lowered. He was thinking, ah, but what _you_ mean, Ben, is that I am _envious_ of Lysandre, you think I am _envious_ of him because he appears to have some sort of understanding with Amina. But I really am _jealous_ of him, Ben, in the old-fashioned sense. I am _jealous_ of him, in the sense that I guard him jealously. I think of him as mine and I am distraught to see someone else with him. I am jealous of him, because I want him, I want him, I want him.

SATURDAY EVENING – AFTER THE CONCERT

Lysandre and Amina had wordlessly agreed to walk past the taxi ranks outside the Opéra Némélios and into the city. They were taking the scenic route, walking side by side in silence. Amina's hand was nestled in the crook of Lysandre's elbow and from time to time she looked up into his blank, cold face.

They had not seen Dr Sycamore or Dr Raine in the Grand Bar during either of the intervals. Amina was privately relieved. Even though Dr Sycamore had broken her heart, she still felt embarrassed on his behalf. When he had first realised that Amina had arrived with Lysandre, to all intents and purposes as his date, the expression of confused horror on his face was so intense that she was rather touched, though surprised by the strength of his reaction.

Lysandre's patrician features were set in their usual expression of classical disdain. Amina could not even begin to speculate on what he was thinking, which was just as well. If she were forced to hazard a guess, she would suggest that Lysandre was thinking about the Litleo. She had enough restraint to guess he was not necessarily thinking about her.

Lysandre was thinking in two registers. The first was deconstructing the astonishing concert, but was constantly distracted by the sub-thoughts. The sub-thoughts were frenetically deconstructing the minutes he'd shared with Dr Sycamore in the Grand Bar.

Back in the box, he had questioned Amina subtly about Dr Raine, and had learned enough about him to both envy his close relationship with Dr Sycamore and dismiss him as a rival. (A rival for what? he snapped at his sub-thoughts. Don't be so ridiculous.) Now his thoughts circled around Dr Sycamore himself.

He flushed when I first spoke to him at the bar. _He must have been tipsy again / oh no he was embarrassed to see you, remember what a spectacle you made of yourself at La Jolie Gardevoir, creeping up to him, squeezing his shoulder, carrying on like a teenage girl / wouldn't you like it if his face was flushed that colour when he lay under you / you should be ashamed of yourself, he finds you sinister, you are a grotesque to him, creeping, squeezing him, always hovering near him…_

His face when he understood that Amina and I were together was… upset. _That's his ex-girlfriend, you know he's never going to be fond of you if you have an affair with his ex-girlfriend_.

Amina is an exceptional person. _That's not what you want, though, is it, that's not what you need, and now he's got the wrong idea, you'll never get to him now, everything you do takes you further and further away from him…_

Even as he spoke, even as he chattered, he was watching me. _You love to feel his eyes on you, you want to feel his gaze all over you / his eyes were wary, they were watching you, he's not sure about you, you're a freak / his eyes are so beautiful, but you're not even sure what colour they are / they're the colour of beauty / he watches you because he doesn't want you to take him unawares again / he won't let you touch him._

I'll see him on Monday. We will discuss Mega Evolution. It will be a mutually beneficial arrangement. _He touched your arm to call you back and it was like he'd touched a switch directly connected to your heart, you felt it skip a beat, it actually hurt / he dropped his hand so quickly, he doesn't want you to get the wrong idea, you disturb him / you left your arm out because your arm glowed where he'd touched it, it was lovely, you wanted him to reach out and touch it again / he was so businesslike, almost unlike himself, he doesn't want you to think he wants you / you want him, you want him…_

Lysandre felt his throat grow tight and constricted and forced the sub-thoughts under. It's a glorious night, he thought. We should walk through one of the squares.

"Amina," he said, "it's a glorious night. We should walk through one of the squares."

Amina smiled in the darkness and tugged him gently in the direction of one of the city's more picturesque plazas. The vague shapes of statues and ornamental bushes made soft shadowson the deeper darkness.

They walked along the path. Amina slipped her hand out of Lysandre's arm and walked a little ahead, her face tipped upwards towards the night sky. The folds of her silk dress rustled in tandem with the leaves. As they rounded a corner, the moon came out from behind a wedge of cloud and filled the square up with a fantastical light. Amina stopped walking.

Lysandre looked down at her. The moonlight had washed Amina's smooth black skin a shimmering silver. The dress fell in such a way that it revealed a triangle of her back and Lysandre thought he'd never seen such a perfectly symmetrical, clean form. She was tall and strong and dazzling.

"You're beautiful," he said, truthfully.

Amina turned slowly round to face him. The dark blossom of her lips was shaking and her eyes looked lost.

Slowly, slowly, as if the moonlight was treacle and she was dragging her limbs through it, she came back towards him until her body was pressed against his. Lysandre didn't move, not even when she shut her eyes, lifted herself up on her toes, and kissed him.

He kept his eyes open. He could see the gold eyeshadow that she'd brushed along her lids earlier that evening. He felt the warm pillar of her body tighten against his, and smelt her honeyed perfume. He watched the puzzled twitch of her eyebrow when he didn't respond, not by clasping her to him, or parting his lips to let her in – or by pushing her away, or moving his head. He just stood and watched her kissing him like it was a curious phenomenon that he needed to document.

As slowly as she had begun, Amina opened her eyes and regarded him steadily. After another couple of seconds, she lazily pulled back so that she could look Lysandre full in the face.

"Interesting," she said drily. "Normally when a man walks me to a private place at night and calls me beautiful, he's got an ulterior motive. Not you, though. You're just _making an observation_."

Lysandre said nothing and Amina sighed.

"You're a strange man, boss."

"I know."

"Are you going to say, 'it's not you, it's me, I'm sorry'?"

"Would you like me to?"

Amina put her head on one side to consider this. "On the one hand, it would be great to see you grasping the basics of social niceties, even the insincere ones. On the other hand, I don't need to be patronised." She gave him a fleeting grin, although Lysandre could see the hurt that her good humour concealed. "Find me a cab, Lysandre. Right now, I'd like to go home. But sooner or later, I'm going to want an explanation out of you."

Lysandre bowed. "Madame, at your service," he said, and thought again, Amina is a exceptional person.

They walked out of the square rather more efficiently than they had entered it. They were only two streets away from the hubbub of Lumiose City by night – the fantasy atmosphere of the square already seemed foolish.

"I really did mean what I said," Lysandre told her, as he helped her into a taxi.

"Lysandre," said Amina sharply. "Don't." She pulled the door shut and rapped on the back of the driver's chair. Lysandre watched her speed away and thought: now I am alone again.

He hailed a taxi and got in, giving his address in a monotone. As the taxi pulled away, he looked back in the direction of the dark square, now hidden from view by the intervening buildings. It would have been so different, he thought, if it had been him kissing me. If it had been him kissing me, we would be in this taxi together by now, and the night would be young, and I'd have his hand in mine.

SATURDAY – THE EARLY HIGH HOURS

Dr Sycamore was lying in bed. It was nearly one in the morning and he couldn't sleep.

He'd spent the rest of the evening with Dr Raine and Hua An, reluctantly playing along to the story that he was devastated by the sight of Amina with another man. He'd tried to change the subject several times, but his friends kept coming back to it. It's my own fault, he'd thought gloomily. If I wasn't such an obvious, self-centred Casanova, they wouldn't find my downfall so fascinating, although they think they're being good friends by giving me the talking cure.

He lay on his back, half-heartedly touching himself. He was only semi-hard and, every so often, burgeoning arousal would give way to an acidic rush of jealousy and misery, as he remembered Amina and Lysandre together (or imagined what they might be doing). He'd drop his cock and roll onto his side, sniffing hard against childish tears, only to alight on an imagined image of Lysandre that would get him half-hard again, and he'd roll back and start fondling himself. He was hardly masturbating – he'd hold the base absently, without moving his hand, squeezing in time to his heartbeat, or he'd run two fingers along the seam and across the head, barely registering the dull flutters of gratification.

How did this happen? he asked himself unhappily. How did I go to meeting some huge handsome weirdo in a café to questioning my sexuality, flaying myself alive with unrequited longing?

He was starting to drop off – even a broken man has a limit to his night time pining. His hand lay like a fig leaf across his cock. The room was swimming and getting dark…

One of the photos he'd found of Lysandre had shown him in a sharp black suit with red piping (oh, yes, that's right, and he'd had a little pastiche fantasy about being the tailor to measure the inside leg for that red piping), in the early days of the Fleur-de-Lis Labs. He was holding an Espurr and looking both pleased and embarrassed; the Espurr was looking at him with unnerving focus, as if it had detected something odd about his mind and was trying to see inside it. Dr Sycamore, after he'd finished being fixated on the red piping on the uniform, had become fixated on the way those big, sadistic hands had grasped the weird little psychic cat with such gentleness, and he'd imagined Lysandre stroking his body with uncanny tenderness before bring a palm down to slap him, hard…

There'd been another one, from a gala of some sort, in a different part of Kalos. The photograph was of several members of the Kalosian nobility, all lined up in evening dress and looking severely at the camera, except Lysandre. Lysandre was looking upwards, his mouth parted, his face distracted. Was it about to rain, Dr Sycamore wondered, or did he see a shape in the clouds? He'd squinted at that photo for quarter of an hour, trying to imagine what Lysandre was seeing, what he was thinking, how he was feeling. After a while his speculations unravelled and he imagined that he had snuck into the gala and was smoking on a balcony, and it was him that Lysandre had seen, and they'd looked into each others' eyes and felt an electric current pass between them…

Dr Sycamore started to dream.

In his dream, he was kneeling in a room. There was a collar around his neck. He was naked.

"There you are," said a voice. "You look very pretty."

Lysandre appeared in his line of vision, fully and gorgeously dressed. Dr Sycamore realised that not only was he naked and wearing a collar, but that he had an enormous erection that was sticking out incongruously.

In the dream, Lysandre removed one of his gloves and ran his fingers delicately along the length of Dr Sycamore's erection, like a gardener appraising a lily.

"Very, very pretty," he said, as Dr Sycamore felt his whole body contract with desire.

Lysandre sat down on the chair (where had the chair come from? Oh well, dream logic) put something on the table (what table? Oh well) beside him. He reached down and lifted Dr Sycamore up easily onto his lap. He adjusted Dr Sycamore on his lap, rubbing him languidly against the hard bulge between his legs, through his trousers. Dr Sycamore made a tiny noise of anticipation.

Lysandre gripped both of his wrists in one hand. He held them together so tightly that it hurt. Dr Sycamore loved how much it hurt.

"You must be hungry," said Lysandre, and reached over to the table. He brought up a hilariously phallic cream puff. Still gripping both of Dr Sycamore's wrists, Lysandre pushed the cream puff into his mouth. The whipped cream spread across Dr Sycamore's lips and chin; some of it dripped down his chest. He felt the hardness between Lysandre's legs twitch as the cream trickled and, instinctively, rocked himself against it.

"Oh," said Lysandre, the edges of his voice much rougher, "you're hungry for something else, are you?"

Dr Sycamore made a breathy noise of affirmation, his mouth still smeared with cream.

Lysandre opened his legs so that Dr Sycamore fell through them, onto the floor, although he kept hold of Dr Sycamore's wrists. The end result was Dr Sycamore on his knees, with his head level with Lysandre crotch, and his arms held high above him.

Lysandre freed his cock by undoing three buttons on his fly – it sprang out, hard and huge. (But shouldn't he be wearing underwear? SHUTUPSHUTUP DREAM LOGIC.) A bead of pre-cum glistened on the tip of his cock and Dr Sycamore, unable to stop himself, licked it off, eliciting a jagged groan from Lysandre above him.

He tangled his spare hand in Dr Sycamore's hair and, roughly, lovingly, forced him to take the fullness of his cock in his mouth…

Dr Sycamore awoke with a start. He had a huge, almost painful erection which was convulsing under his palm. With the images of the dream still unravelling in his head, he grabbed his cock and started to tug desperately, suffering with the intensity of his arousal. He came with a cry that was almost a cry of defeat, spraying spunk up his stomach.

After a couple of weird, glowy seconds, reality returned.

I am alone, thought Dr Sycamore. And if I keep obsessing over this man, I will always be alone.

Dr Sycamore had intended to swear, but instead he muttered, "I can't bear it, I can't bear it," and started to clean up. When he was done, he lay back and let the tears run over his cheeks.


	8. Sunday

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

Professor Axe lived in an old-fashioned little shuttered house in a picturesque neighbourhood. The quarter was best known for producing joinery and medical instruments, and had the air of a self-contained village within the wider metropolis. The shutters of Professor Axe's house were painted pastel colours and had little heart shapes cut out in the middle. When Lysandre saw the shiny brass doorknob and the disproportionate folk-art Pokémon carved into the woodwork of the front door, he felt a modernist's thrill of revulsion for the pastoral kitsch.

He'd asked his driver to drop him at the end of the street, so that he could walk the stretch of the road with the Litleo. He didn't know what he was looking for, but he took in the neighbourhood with excessive care; anything that would give him the slightest advantage over Professor Axe was not to be dismissed.

The closer he drew to the sweet, rustic house, the more he felt like a foolish adventurer stepping into the wicked witch's cottage.

He wasn't sure he could bring himself to use the humorous door knocker.

He was saved from having to make a decision by Professor Axe's Noivern, which had evidently been listening for his footsteps from the moment his driver deposited him at the end of the road. It raised an eerie screech on the other side of the door. In his arms, Lysandre's Litleo bristled pugnaciously.

"Blautsauger! Down!" said a sharp voice behind the cutesy woodwork.

Professor Axe wrenched open the door.

She was not a tall woman but the absolute confidence that she radiated made her seem taller. Lysandre instinctively drew himself up to his full height, which normally made people hesitate but didn't faze Professor Axe.

"Châtelaine des Aix," he said, formally, reading off an internal script, "on behalf of the Château de la Masséna du Feu-Calincourt I present my compliments to you-"

"Ah, the boy du Feu," she interrupted. "You're just on time. The kettle's boiled. Come in." Lysandre blinked and followed her into the house.

Blautsauger was clinging to the decorative stucco on the ceiling of the hallway like a vampire waiting to drop. The Litleo growled at it as they passed into the living room, which had the requisite twee rocking chair, hand-carved table, knick-knack covered mantelpiece and, for some reason, a gigantic executioner's sword leaning casually against the wall.

"You'll take coffee," said Professor Axe. It wasn't a question. Lysandre accepted the coffee, which was rather good, and sat down carefully in a sagging armchair, which had erupted in a plague of antimacassars.

"You wanted to see me, châtelaine," said Lysandre. He was taking in Professor Axe, wearing a strange, shapeless tartan skirt, her hair in disarray, her hooked nose dominating her face, and thinking, how can this ugly vessel possibly contain one of the finest minds in Kalos?

"I know I wanted to see you. Don't tell me about my own actions, it's a sloppy conversational habit. And don't call me 'châtelaine'… Seigneur."

Lysandre bowed ironically from his waist. The Litleo in his lap shifted nervously.

"Its name?" asked Professor Axe, nodded briefly at the animal.

"I haven't given him one yet," said Lysandre. Professor Axe sniffed, dismissed the topic with a twitch of her head.

"You have seen Augustine Sycamore," she said.

Even though this was exactly the conversation he had been preparing for, the name still made Lysandre's heart jump guiltily. It must have been the use of Dr Sycamore's first name, three hallowed syllables that Lysandre only permitted himself to think in moments of great weakness. He knew his face was impassive and kept it so.

"Madame, we have met three times, and have shared maybe twenty-five minutes of conversation in total. I will be calling on the university labs tomorrow afternoon, for a business visit."

Professor Axe snorted. "Business indeed, boy. You'll be wanting to know if he's made any advances on the exclusion principle. I hear it has you stumped and you've wasted a fortune in Stones and Sundries already."

Lysandre sipped his coffee, still impassive. Inside, he was seething, not only because Professor Axe had second-guessed him, but because it must mean that someone was leaking information from the Fleur-de-Lis Labs to the old witch.

The exclusion principle was the (rather slangy, inaccurate) term for the algorithm that would indentify Pokémon capable of Mega Evolution – both general species and specific individuals. It seemed impossible to write.

"We are running experiments on all seventeen Types," said Lysandre coolly. "It is time-consuming, but I am sure we will crack the algorithm, and we're making a lot of interesting discoveries about Attacks and Abilities in the meantime."

Professor Axe's eyes glittered. "All _seventeen_ types, eh? Well, well, well, isn't that something." She turned the cup in her hands, reminding Lysandre strongly of an evil clockwork doll winding its own key. "Tell me, du Feu, have you ever owned an Eevee?"

Lysandre let his mind light briefly on the memory of his father's Umbreon but forced the memories back under with a practised effort of will. "Never, madame."

"Professor Fortmaine, the head of the evolutionary biology department, acquired one several years ago, and it's become the department Eevee since the last one evolved into a Leafeon. Technically the Eeevee belongs to her wife, but all evolutionary biologists are fascinated by them, of course, because of their evolutionary capabilities, so the department have unofficially adopted it." She turned the cup again, watching him.

Lysandre sighed. "I am not a fool, madame," he said wearily. "I know you are talking about the missing Type theory of the Periodic Types Table. Fleur-de-Lis has not had the time – nor, it must be said, the inclination – to pursue fantasy elements. We would not even know where to start."

Professor Axe eyed him, amused. "No, I just bet you wouldn't," she said cheerfully. "If it's any consolation, most people don't. I'm certain there's a further Type to be worked into the exclusion principle, but I'm not sure what it is. Gus Sycamore's closer than anyone else to cracking it."

"Because he's brilliant?" said Lysandre. He was amazed by the eagerness in his own voice. Let me hear you compliment him, he thought. Let me hear his praises sung.

"He's quite bright," Professor Axe conceded. "There's more to it than that, though. It's his personality, his sense of self. I feel certain that the next Type will unveil itself; it will not merely be discovered. It requires… attracting. And I think it will make itself known in an Eevee." She met Lysandre's eye steadily and shrugged. "I can't give you more than that, du Feu. Evolutionary biology is not the precise science it was thirty years ago. It's practically a liberal art these days, although with maths and microscopes."

She leaned forwards and put her coffee on the horribly quaint table. It was untouched. Outside in the hall, where the hilariously-shaped umbrella tree stood in the corner and the painting of the pot of flowers hung perkily on the wall, the Noivern screeched and dragged its claws along the woodwork. The menace in the air was palpable and all the worse for being rose-tinted.

Professor Axe was leaning across the table now. "I need not tell you," she said, "that I will personally see to it that all hell is unleashed if you attempt to plagiarise the work of Dr Sycamore and his research team."

"It had not occurred to me to do so," said Lysandre stiffly. It really hadn't. He had simply assumed that the bulk of the university research team would eventually be absorbed into Fleur-de-Lis, for the sake of expediency and because Lysandre was very good at getting what he wanted. The École Paranormale Superieure had the best evolutionary labs in Kalos, buoyed up by decades of research; the Fleur-de-Lis Labs were barely four years old and needed extending. Why else would he move to Lumiose City?

Oh, of course, the EPS was a state-funded university and there were laws about the departments within state universities remaining autonomous from private businesses and corporations, but one wasn't born into the Kalos ruling class without learning a bit about manipulation on a massive political scale.

"I'll also see to it that a different circle of hell opens up right under your feet should you attempt to invade and absorb the department like a virus," Professor Axe added. "I hope I do not need to remind you that it was once _my_ department."

Something into Lysandre curdled furiously. You are old, he thought, in his hard thoughts. You are ugly. You cannot fight me.

"Madame," he said, his voice tight, "you insult me."

"Au contraire, Seigneur, I anticipate you," said Professor Axe smoothly.

"This was the purpose of your… summons?"

Professor Axe gave him a humourless smile. "Oh, no, there was more, but it wasn't anything I had to ask you. I just needed to watch your reactions. I would not have believed that you had only spoken to him for twenty-five minutes in total, Lysandre. You are like a man with a fever. I can practically hear your thoughts creaking."

The combination of his first name, spoken in a sneer that was not entirely devoid of pity, and the content of the observation made Lysandre slam his cup down on the table. Half of the coffee slopped over the rim. The Litleo many an uneasy noise.

"We have nothing more to say to one another, châtelaine," he snapped, and stood up, holding the Litleo in his arms.

Professor Axe raised an eyebrow. "What a shame. I wanted to have a conversation about the Comte's little army of malcontents, Les Chevaliers de la Flamme. He started it after your mother's death, as I am sure you are aware. A lobbying organisation with a very confused agenda."

"My father and I have not spoken in seven years," snarled Lysandre, already halfway across the room. "His hobbies are none of my concern, and I must say that my work is none of yours."

As he reached the door of the room, the Noivern made a terrible noise. This is a house of horrors, Lysandre was thinking, as his sub-thoughts bubbled.

The Noivern's head appeared at the top of the door, craning in. Its huge ears were swivelling back and forth. It should have looked comical but it looked frightening. The Litleo mewed tremulously at Lysandre.

"Blautsauger is listening to your heartbeat," said Professor Axe. "I don't think he thinks you're in a fit state to leave. Are you sure you wouldn't like to sit down and steady yourself, Seigneur? We could talk about Dr Sycamore, or about Les Chevaliers de la Flamme. I feel sure that both are going to play an important part in your life over the next few years, especially as the Fleur-de-Lis Labs are funded by Les Chevaliers. And especially as whenever I say Gus's name, you look like a man drowning."

Lysandre couldn't take anymore. The Noivern's head was weaving back and forth in the doorway like a venomous snake, but he ducked past it. Its haunting screech followed him out into the street.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON – LATER

Dr Sycamore had cancelled all of his afternoon plans. He'd eaten little and eaten late. He'd drawn the blinds. He'd ignored the text from the girl from the taxi. He bit his knuckles and scratched the soft flesh on the inside of his arm. He couldn't focus on anything without his eyes skittering madly. Every time he looked in the direction of his computer, he felt a tight pain around his chest.

His Fletchinder had gone out to stretch its wings, and on returning had settled peaceably back into its Pokéball. His Fennekin was still at the hospital, flu being such a difficult disease to treat in a apartment was quiet.

The folder of photos, originally labelled 'LdF', was now labelled 'cauchemar'. Dr Sycamore had gone through them again and again, until his eye barely registered any detail but the red hair, the broad shoulders, the cruel mouth, the fathomless eyes. He felt as if he was allowing himself to sink into some cloying darkness; he felt perverse, because there was a sort of revelation in his misery. He wondered if this was what it felt like to be religious – a private agony in a dark room, straining with every nerve and breath to bring yourself closer to a being who might never hear you, never notice your adulation.

Dr Sycamore was not the sort of man to waste hours doing nothing. He loved his work, which he regarded as his life. He loved people: Hua An had once described him as having 'the social disease'. And yet here he was, his phone switched off and his door locked, wanting more than anything to wrap himself in phantasms.

He was pacing a strip of carpet in his living room, at the opposite end of the room from his computer. This was because he had just made himself panic.

He'd opened up a browser, looked up a search engine and then typed in, carefully, _ça fait mal si quelqu'un m'encule_?

He'd hit enter and practically leapt out of his seat, so that he wouldn't have to see the search results. Now he paced up and down and wiped the sweat from his palms on his jeans.

The perspiration under his arms was cooling and leaving his shirt feeling rank and uncomfortable on his skin. He pulled it off numbly. His entire body was wracked with agitation.

The search results suggested he wasn't the first person to ever wonder.

He crept closer to the computer and clicked on the first result. It was a post on a forum that asked exactly the same question as what Dr Sycamore had tapped in. There were dozens of responses. The most popular one read, 'it can hurt at first but just remmber 2 take it slow n use lots of lube! dont let ur partner rush u, always go at ur own pace n enjoy urself!'

Dr Sycamore stared at the exclamation marks with a deep, unmoveable sense of irritation.

Another said, 'when you start getting used to it thats when you start enjoyin it lol'.

The jollity of it all was horribly inconsistent with how he felt every time he thought about the things Lysandre might do to him. At the back of his mind, Dr Sycamore reminded himself that, until this week, he'd always seen sex as fun and happy. He had quite a lot of it and he did it with gusto, exclusively with women. He'd probably use exclamation marks when he talked about it.

This was the first time he'd ever felt so serious.

It was the first time he realised that he wanted to be damaged, to feel like he was being given a long-overdue punishment. Or a blessing, but by fire.

Buried in the back of the posts, marked as unpopular, was another response. 'Oui, ça fait mal et ça te plaira.'

Another buried response: 'You'll learn to take it, then you'll start to crave it.'

Dr Sycamore closed his eyes. His imagination was running riot.

What if- what if he and Lysandre were somehow in a bedroom together, and Lysandre had kissed him, hard enough to make his lips throb? If he'd held Dr Sycamore's lower lip between his teeth and bitten it gently, then moved his mouth to Dr Sycamore's neck to bite again, much harder? Time and thought would blur, they'd tear into each other immediately. What if, as Lysandre was undressing him and pushing him backwards onto a bed, as he raised his hips to let Lysandre pull off his jeans, what if he asked the same question?

"Will it hurt if you fuck me?"

And what if Lysandre responded, his voice rough,

"Yes, it'll hurt and you'll like it." Or, bearing down on him, sliding an arm under him and bringing his lips close to Dr Sycamore's ear, "You'll learn to take it, then you'll start to crave it."

Dr Sycamore felt panicked tears prickle his eyelids. He decided he would take a cool shower.

It helped for about five minutes.

What am I going to do? he thought desperately, reaching for the soap. What if he arrives on Monday and walks through the door and I can't handle it? What if it makes me so unhinged that I get down on my knees so I can press my forehead against his shoes? What will Harjeet and Jean-Baptiste think?

He was washing extremely absentmindedly, passing the soap over his body like he was taking it on a tour. And, oh dear, he was thinking, we will be talking about Mega Evos, what if I try and crack a joke and it comes out as a terrible double entendre? What if he doesn't have a sense of humour? Mon dieu, I don't even really know that about him. I know nothing, except that his childhood was miserable, he likes cooking, he's extremely intelligent and he's more glorious to behold than anything I have ever seen in my entire life.

These thoughts made Dr Sycamore feel guilty and revolting. I am a dirty old man before my time, he thought bitterly. I am the classic pervert. I am the most reductive of objectifiers. I have found a man and made him a cipher for my fantasies.

He cupped the soap in his hands and stared unseeingly at it.

But I do want to get to know him better. I think I could comfort him, if he'd let me. We could be friends. It might be enough. Or, I suppose, it might be sheer torture.

He worked up a lather in his hands, blinked vaguely at the forming froth. When it started to drip over the edges of his palms, he put the soap back on the rack and lifted his arms to watch the froth drip down them.

Would he like to watch me showering, I wonder, thought Dr Sycamore, unable to stop himself.

He felt his cock start to harden.

Tant pis, he thought. Let's indulge one last time.

Let's pretend, he thought, let's pretend that he was so keen to talk about the research with me that he came to my apartment. Let's pretend he knew where I lived, ha, and that I'd left the front door unlocked and he, with that arrogant, aristocratic calm of his, assumed it would be fine to let himself in. And he heard the shower running and his curiosity was piqued.

Dr Sycamore pressed his head against the side of the shower, supporting himself with one arm. With his other hand he started to touch himself, his eyes squeezed shut. After a few minutes, his legs trembled enough that he had to get slowly to his knees, bumping into the glass panels of the shower. He felt as if he was in a glass box.

I am a toy, he thought, tugging harder, his mouth twisting. I am a plaything. Take me out of the box whenever you want to play with me.

His toes were curling.

Let's pretend, he thought feverishly, that he saw me like this, abased, crouching over my hard-on. And he saw me like a captured thing, a conquest, in a glass box and knew, in that moment, that all he had to do was open the door and take me out to have me.

He tipped his face back and let the shower blind and deafen him, intent on only one sensation.

Or let himself in, he thought.

With that thought came the beautiful images – Lysandre undressing with deliberation but unable to hide the eager shivering that made him struggling to undo his buttons, Lysandre watching Dr Sycamore watching him through the glass, murmuring some teasing, complimentary thing about him. Looking at him like a specimen in its case and offering to pin him up, pin him down.

Lysandre stepping in, kneeling behind Dr Sycamore (here Dr Sycamore calculated the amount of space this would require, and shuffled closer to the edge of the shower, _even though there was no one there_), wrapping his big arms around Dr Sycamore's chest. Kissing the back of his neck, lifting and moving his body to kiss his shoulders and back.

He'd put his hand over my hand and guide my rhythm, thought Dr Sycamore, then no! He'd want more than that. He'd keep reaching down between my legs, run the tip of his forefinger in a circle down there, _down there_, oh yes, and I'd be wet and slick from the water. He'd force the first joint of his finger in, then the second, all the while asking, Do you like that, Professor? Is it hurting you? You can take it for me, can't you?

(By this time Dr Sycamore had cautiously started doing the same with his spare hand. It felt odd and good and confusing. He sat back on his heels and whimpered softly.)

His body, though Dr Sycamore frantically, bowed over mine, covering it in a curve, his body over mine like the wings of an angel covering me, his hands on me, his fingers in me, oh, wrapping round my body like an angel's wings, like an angel wrestling me into submission, oh, making me take it, oh oh oh oh.

His struck his forehead against the side of the shower and cried out with terrible pleasure.

When it was over, Dr Sycamore watched the results of his orgasm swirl away with the water. What a piece of work is man, he thought sourly. A quintessence of dust sounds about right. A quintessence of wasted spunk and snot and tears.

The climax had given him some relief from the violently consuming sexual desire, but it had left him feeling sadder and lonelier – he had a feeling it was always going to be like this, now. He felt dirty too, like he'd been caught doing something disgusting and didn't know how to explain himself. He sat curled in the corner of the shower and put his head on his knees, letting the tears come. He was so tired of crying all the time and so, so tired of feeling like the world was broken because he'd smashed it and he'd never be able to put it back together.

"Please," he whispered, his voice lost under the stoic rush of the shower. "Please, just let me stop wanting him. Let me switch off. Please. Let it end now. I've had enough."

It didn't work like that, of course.

After a further five minutes weeping quietly, Dr Sycamore forced himself to stand up and switch the shower off. I should go and look through my papers and prepare for tomorrow, he thought, stepping out and towelling himself off. Just because I'm a pathetic shell of a person now, it doesn't mean the world doesn't carry on just the same as it always did.

He had to walk past a mirror to get to his wardrobe, and he dreaded catching sight of his reflection. He felt sure that he'd see a malformed version of himself, crippled by longing and monstrous fantasies. When he saw the same body as he'd woken up in at the beginning of the week, he was actually surprised.

He stood before himself and attempted his pleasant smile, the one he used during Flirt Autopilot.

"Bienvenue!" he said aloud. "I'm so glad you could come!"

His voice, his face, his stance, everything seemed normal. Only his eyes and mouth gave him away, the former red-rimmed and uncertain, the latter straining to keep his lips turned up. He tried again.

"Bienvenue! So glad you could make it! Come in and meet the team!"

He kept practising until he felt the fake Dr Sycamore solidifying around the real, broken Dr Sycamore like an enamel casing. He was easy, pleasant, flirtatious, polite, attentive. He would not betray anything to anyone.

He must never know, thought Dr Sycamore. I must never let him find out.

SUNDAY EVENING

Lysandre woke up from a fitful doze and spent two blissful seconds unsure of where he was and who he was before he thought the word 'sycamore' and remembered everything, ever.

His body felt tight and ached all over – this wasn't so bad, it was a deliberate pain, as he'd visited the private gym after his hideous meeting with Professor Axe and had gone three cathartic rounds with Artur the Hitmonchan – but his mind was still humming with the increasingly unbalanced fantasies that he'd used to make himself come almost as soon as he'd gotten home. He gently tested his punched-up, swollen knuckles as he sat on the edge of the bed and thought, This ends today.

The sub-thoughts sniggered but he pushed them under. He could feel the spark draining out of him, replaced by coldness and hardness and emptiness.

Good, he thought. It's better that way. Keep it buried.

He was mostly dressed but Lysandre couldn't abide creased clothes. He stripped off briskly and fetched fresh clothes from the wardrobe. His mouth was dry and he thought, I shall have a glass of orange juice.

As he stepped out of his bedroom and walked to the big kitchen, he found the still-unnamed Litleo playing happily with the head of a rose, snapped from a vase along the corridor. It had apparently been exploring the semi-public floors, getting used to its new territory.

"Hello, mon petit," said Lysandre, leaning down to pat it. "Come and have something to eat."

The Litleo purred up at him and followed, the rose head held carefully between its teeth. It trailed petals with every step and Lysandre looked back, once, to admire the aesthetic effect.

_If he were standing at the other end of a carpet of roses_, the sub-thoughts began, but were cut off immediately. Lysandre felt better than he had in days.

He fed the Litleo ("What am I going to call you, little one?") and poured himself the orange juice. His thoughts were lining up with pleasing crystal clarity: liquid was good for the body, the body required liquids, it helped it function, which was good as he had work to do. He imagined himself as a plant, or a tree, actually, a tree which would take the nutrients it needed, grow in silence and grow strong. Trees didn't lust or long to be intertwined with the branches of another tree.

The human body is the forest that a soul inhabits, he thought. A sub-thought said _tree_ wistfully, and when he didn't squeeze it shut, added _sycamore_, which he pushed down on hard.

He finished off the juice to the calming sound of the Litleo eating. Every gulp of juice was renewing the unfurling leaves at the tip of his fingers, the bark encasing his body. He was functioning perfectly; he was a very good tree.

_Hey_, said the sub-thoughts brightly, _remember the last time you saw your father and conspicuously didn't see your fucked-up mother? Remember how you left Kalos again and spent months hardening yourself, refusing to deal with it, and then you started to think you were a robot and every time you ate or drank something you kept on imagining your batteries being recharged?_

He put the glass in the sink; he'd absentmindedly used a good crystal one, which would shatter in the dishwasher. As he reached out to turn the tap on, he noticed, blankly, that his hand was shaking.

_Remember how you thought you were a robot and then you had that nervous breakdown? Remember that?_

He turned the hot water on and held the shaking hand under it, letting the skin burn red and then white.

If the Fleur-de-Lis Labs are funded by my father's lobbying group – Les Chevaliers de la Flamme or Flare or whatever they're called – I should investigate it, he thought, ignoring his sub-thoughts. I wouldn't want his slipshod ideas about politics getting in the way of the funding he gives us.

He started to wash the crystal glass, with immense diligence. The shaking hand had gone dead with pain but at least it wasn't shaking anymore.

Maybe they'll even be useful, he thought. I wouldn't necessarily have to be in contact with him. I have people enough to do that for me.

'People enough to do that for me'. With awful suddenness, he saw himself as the scientists and engineers at the Fleur-de-Lis Labs must see him, and the employees at Café Lysandre and the outside world too – a man at the top of an organisation, independent, exacting, sovereign. Very much alone.

He squeezed the glass until it cracked under the pressure. The Litleo looked up and made a frightening 'mree!' when it saw Lysandre backing away from the sink, holding the wrist of a hand dripping with blood.

"I'm fine, mon petit," he said softly to the Litleo, staring at the fragments of glass glinting from the lines of his palm. "I'm just going to pick these out. T'inquiète pas."

The shock momentarily shattered his defences and brought the cumulative anguish of the last week back to him. Nothing was okay, he wasn't okay. He thought, I will clean this up and find some bandages, but the sub-thoughts were wittering, _well that was close, it could have gone a lot worse, you could have actually started believing you were a tree._

He sat down with a thump on the floor – regretting now the choice of polished oak, which would show the bloodstains more obviously than marble – and stared at the bleeding hand. I will clean this up, he thought, but didn't move. The Litleo crept over, its ears flattened with worry, and curled up between his feet.

He could see the near future unfolding with vicious inevitability. He would oscillate between his hard thoughts and his sub-thoughts: alternatively dehumanising himself, Dr Sycamore and, in the process, everyone around him in order to function efficiently; and succumbing to the violent desires raging in him and, later, the self-loathing this would bring. He'd have to keep doing this until he either destroyed himself or destroyed Dr Sycamore.

In this bright, awful moment – the most honest he had been with himself in years – his soul open before him like the map of an unloved, abandoned city, he could see that he'd latched on to Dr Sycamore obsessively. Because Dr Sycamore was good and brave and kind and caring, because he was delicious and desirable. He was everything Lysandre wasn't, and he was so beautiful that Lysandre could feel his body grieving for the man, a physical yearning.

Lysandre couldn't ignore it, although he could build his usual defences around it. He'd have to add his obsession to the other deformities in his soul, alongside his parents and Pas-du-Chat and his horror in the unthinking grotesqueries of the world and the truth in the last words his father had ever said to him.

"What can I do?" he asked the Litleo, who was looking anxiously at his hand. "Where can I go from here?"

I must continue, he told himself firmly, in answer, when the Litleo just turned sad eyes on him. I must do what I came here to do. I must do my work.

As for Dr Sycamore, well. He must never know. I must never let him find out.

SUNDAY – NIGHT

The moon was low and lovely in the sky and the stars were flickering like scattered drops of water. Beneath the poetic vista of the heavens, Lumiose City was slowing down and dimming its lights. It was Sunday night and the week was over. A new day would begin tomorrow, and then tomorrow, and then tomorrow.

FIN


End file.
